The Big House
by Checkerboards
Summary: The sequel to 'Housebreaking'. Jackie and the Riddler have moved to their new address: Arkham Asylum. Between the noise, the cold, and the occasional orderly with a vengeance, it's not looking like a good idea to hang around for very long. But getting out of Arkham is the easy part...
1. Errors in Judgement

The Riddler woke up and immediately wished that he hadn't. His head pulsed with pain that was almost as intense as the sharp ache in his swollen ankle. The rest of him wasn't much better off, due to Batman's tender loving care as well as a few injuries generously donated by that orderly. His lip, when he probed it gently with his tongue, was swollen and hot. Probably infected. The orderlies never were too good at washing their hands...

He'd feel better if he splashed some cold water on his face. Really, he'd feel even better if he took a long, hot shower, coupled with a few treats from the liquor cabinet and a nap in his nice soft bed. But he had to work with what he had, and while Arkham was short on hot showers, liquor, and soft beds, it had a nearly limitless supply of cold water.

He began to slide his hands upward to lever himself upright and jerked to a halt like a dog on a leash as stiff leather restraints pulled hard on his wrists. He gingerly shifted his ankles. They, too, were pinioned to the bed, even his sprained one, which sent a vicious stab of agony up his leg as the strap tugged on it.

"Awake already, huh?"

Whoever had tied him down had done it backwards. He slowly craned his head around until he could peer halfway over his thin pillow and see who was outside the thick plexiglass window of his cell.

It was the orderly - whatever his name was - the one that had punched him. At least, he was pretty sure it was. Multiple concussions tended to fog the memory a bit. The man's mustache did look familiar, though.

"Have we learned our lesson about sneaking out?" the man said, smirking.

The only lesson that Eddie had learned was that the hiding place behind the statue was no hiding place at all. It figured that even the long-dead Arkhams were content to turn him in to Batman. Eddie turned his head and did his best to ignore the sneering radiating in at him from the hallway.

"Ignoring me, now? Can't have that." The orderly let himself in to the cell, holding a small folding chair in one hand. He fussily set it up just out of Eddie's line of sight and seated himself. The chair let out a shuddering squeak as if a mouse was dying. "You see, after your unauthorized walk last night, the doctors decided that you need to be watched a little more closely. We're going to be spending a lot of time together, you and I."

Eddie, eyes shut, sighed internally as the man went on in a vaguely threatening fashion. If there was one thing that he didn't need right now, it was an orderly on a power trip. He seemed to attract them, which was one of the serious drawbacks of being a supervillain who found that even the size small jumpsuits were a bit baggy.

"...unless you want another trip to the hospital wing," the orderly concluded smugly. "Any questions?"

Eddie remained absolutely still, like a man playing dead in front of a grizzly bear. It was really the only defense he had. Getting angry made them happy, getting violent made them happier, because it meant that they could do absolutely anything and not get censured for it, and any sarcastic or rude remarks he might make would only earn him a double dose of meds or an elbow to the ribs. By the rules of the asylum, he couldn't get in trouble if he lay still and said nothing. So nothing is what he would do until this oaf got bored and went away. How long could he possibly keep interest in someone who never did anything, anyway?

* * *

Many people view the legal system as a way of implementing and enforcing strict, black-and-white rules about crime and punishment. This is an opinion that would make many lawyers laugh until their lungs fell out.

In truth, the laws of the land are an ever-changing morass of restrictions and loopholes, followed with varying degrees of strictness by the wide spectrum of judges and lawyers charged with studying them. Even legal experts physically cannot keep up with the immense amounts of knowledge required to truly understand and implement every facet of the law. Precedents, pretrials, motions and Miranda warnings have blended together into one nearly incomprehensible bundle of dictates and various bits of Latin gibberish.

The issue was further complicated in Gotham, where the introduction of vigilantes had almost completely obliterated any hope of due process. In theory, a suspected criminal had the right to be informed of his crime, read his rights, and presented with warrants to search their personal effects, rules which certain black-cowled vigilantes cheerfully ignored in favor of a much more efficient boot to the head. The lawyers and judges in Gotham, and indeed in many other cities across the nation, had done their best to cram the criminals' rights in wherever they could fit them.

Of course, some of the lawyers, reasoning that the big money came from the ones with the most to lose - ie, the criminals - had opted to use all of their weaselly, loophole-finding, truth-twisting ways to ensure that Gotham's ne'er-do-wells could slide out of jail with as little fuss as possible. But they weren't about to work for the poor criminals - the thugs, the gang members, the low-level henches. Very few people want to be weasels for free.

The lawyer sitting next to Jackie was entirely unweaselly and had the wardrobe to show it. The neatly pressed cuffs on his pants were beginning to fray both top and bottom. His tie, which was striped with dull red and boring blue, had faint speckles of long-ago spills splatted neatly across its middle third.

The courtroom - a small, sweaty space crammed with people accused of a bewildering variety of offenses - was not what Jackie had expected at all. She had anticipated that it would be just her, her lawyer, and the judge, not this swarming horde of other people clutching traffic tickets and paperwork. One by one the crowd before her was called to the stand and dealt with in a matter of minutes.

"Is it always this fast?" she whispered to her lawyer.

He smiled back. "Arraignments only take about five minutes, tops. We'll be up shortly."

Jackie did her best to smile back. Then, ducking her head to avoid the blatant stare of one of the reporters sprawled in the benches, she fiddled with the chain that tied her handcuffed arms to her shackled feet.

"Hands down," a guard at her elbow ordered, making as if to thump her broken arm. Jackie quickly dropped the chain and laid her hands quietly in her lap. True, after her month in Arkham, her broken arm had nearly healed, but it still ached for ages if it was jostled too roughly.

Had it been a month? Maybe it had been longer. The days had run together into one long blur of gray - gray walls, gray jumpsuits, and gray meatloaf on her equally gray tray.

Not that the meatloaf was too terrible, mind you. The food was a little better since Arkham was policed by a better class of inspector than the prison system. There was a distinct and welcome lack of such prison delicacies as loaves of bread made with baby formula or salt-free limp brown french fries. In fact, Arkham was actually better than jail in a number of ways. No roommate meant no worries when you were locked in at night. The staff were friendlier, at least to Jackie. Working in a building with the Joker left them more than happy to deal with someone who wasn't going to try to horribly murder them in a hilarious new way. True, within Arkham there was a larger risk of being thrown to the ground and forcibly introduced to your new best friend, Mr. Thorazine, but even that had its benefits. It was certainly easier to sleep through the caterwauling susurrus of noise that ceaselessly wailed through Arkham's corridors when you were submerged under a little pink cloud of heavy sedation.

On the other hand, they were keeping her on the opposite side of the building from the rogues' wing. She hadn't seen Eddie in...however long it had been. It was almost as if they were purposely keeping them apart, which, she supposed, was extremely likely. Yes, that one orderly with the odd mustache had offered to take her to see Eddie, but even Jackie with her limited criminal experience could smell a trap when it was that obvious. That orderly could have been planning to take her anywhere. She had vowed that she was going to lay low, be a good little inmate, and obey the rules right up to the moment that Eddie appeared at her door and set them free.

If he was going to. Oh, he loved her, she was certain - fairly certain - but it had been so long since she'd seen him. Surely he could have escaped by now. What was he waiting for? And so she'd woken up every morning, disappointed at finding herself still inside Arkham, and obediently trudged through her daily routine.

Today, instead of therapy, she'd been dragged onto a heavily armored bus that had taken her directly to the courthouse. She'd barely had time to be introduced to her lawyer before they were hustled into this courtroom and led to a bench presided over by an armed guard.

"Jacqueline Baker?"

Jackie and her lawyer pushed past the waiting crowd and took their seats at one of the small tables placed in front of the judge's bench.

The judge consulted a piece of paper. "Miss Baker, you're charged with two counts of aggravated robbery, forty-five counts of assault, two separate counts of attempted murder, one count of vandalism, three counts of conspiracy, false imprisonment, eleven counts of arson, two counts of theft, two counts of reckless driving, three counts of assault against a hero, and your case is punishable by a maximum of eighteen consecutive life sentences. How do you want to plead?"

"That can't be right!" Jackie protested. "I never assaulted forty-five people! Arson? Conspiracy? There has to be some mistake!"

The judge ruffled through her papers, finally extracting a paper-clipped police report and flicking it open to the correct page. "On September 17, you and Edward Nygma burned down an apartment building, causing damage to eleven separate apartments. On October 10, you and Mr. Nygma smashed the window of a taxicab after refusing to pay your fare. On October 19, you participated in an armed robbery of the Gotham Opera House, culminating in the unlawful capture and assault of a sidekick. On November 1, you attacked Yvonne Mcintyre in the Gotham Public Library. On January 5, you instigated a cross-city car chase. On February 7, you participated in an armed robbery of a science fiction convention, which caused injury to a number of people as well as resulting in the theft of a significant amount of money and a unicorn necklace. You also once again attempted to murder the sidekick known as Robin." The judge regarded her with cold interest.

"I have a receipt for the unicorn necklace," Jackie offered numbly.

"If you can provide it to the court, that leaves us with the other seventy-one charges, then," the judge replied. "How do you plead?"

Jackie looked desperately at her lawyer. "But it was Eddie who did most of that stuff!" she hissed quietly.

"That doesn't matter. You were with him, so you get charged for everything he does, just as he gets charged for everything you did. Don't worry about it," he added as Jackie felt her stomach drop all the way down to her shoes. The lawyer cleared his throat. "Your Honor, I'd like to file a motion to dismiss all charges."

The judge regarded the lawyer over the tops of her glasses. "On what grounds?" she asked tiredly.

"You might be wondering why you never received a copy of her official information. No one ever wrote it." He darted a sidelong glance at a row of observers, two of which were suddenly extremely interested in what he was saying. "In fact, none of the proper paperwork was filed. Not only that, but she was never given access to myself or any other lawyer, not to mention that she never saw a judge within the mandatory twenty-four hours after her arrest. Her continued imprisonment is illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional." He brandished a small sheaf of paper.

The judge, clearly unimpressed by his rhetoric, took off her glasses and tiredly rubbed her eyelids as a bailiff retrieved the papers. She took them from his hand and scanned them briefly, nodding as the proper permissions and procedures were laid out before her eyes.

"This appears to be in order," she sighed in the hollow voice of someone that has seen too many criminals walking away from her authority. "I have no choice but to drop all charges."

"YES!"

"Miss Baker, please _be seated_." The judge glared at her over the tops of her glasses. Jackie dropped back into her seat, blushing furiously as the observers and other defendants murmured surprise at one another.

Of course, not everyone remembered to murmur. The pair of observers at the far side of the room had progressed all the way to barking criticisms at one another in tones that suggested that someone would soon be going to the hospital.

"I cannot believe that you forgot to file her papers!" The stocky man in the labcoat shoved his glasses farther up his nose and scowled at his benchmate.

The second man, who on closer inspection bore a Gotham DOJ badge on his shoulder, bristled angrily. "We had nothing to do with it! She was in _your_ custody most of the time -"

"And what about the twenty-four hours, huh? Where was her meeting with the judge?"

"You have no room to scold us about legalities! How many human rights violations have you had in the past five years? Twenty? Thirty? Or have you lost count?"

"How dare you!"

"GENTLEMEN!" the judge bellowed, glaring a laser-bright stare of fury at the two combatants. "I will remind you that you are in a courtroom." The two men seated themselves, pointedly not looking at one another as they did so.

"There is one more matter before the court today. Ordinarily, this would have been settled at your bond hearing, but because you did not have one... " The judge paused to glare at the DOJ representative, who steadfastly focused on the floor in front of him while the Arkham representative theatrically rolled his eyes with disgust. "It appears we have some unfinished business before us. Due to the statement given to this court by Dr. Thomson, I must remand you into the custody of a mental health facility."

"What?" Jackie gasped.

"Miss Baker," the judge said forbiddingly. Blushing again, Jackie bit her lip. "As you may not be aware, the precedents cited in _Gotham vs. Wesker_, _Gotham vs. Crane_ and, indeed, _Gotham vs. Nygma_ tell us that anyone accused of working for a, ahem, _supercriminal_ must undergo a psychological exam before their bond hearing. While you didn't have a bond hearing, you did have a psychiatric evaluation, and based on its results, it would be irresponsible of this court to allow you back onto the streets without receiving the proper psychiatric care."

"Can they do that?" Jackie whispered to her lawyer.

"Yes," he murmured back. "Don't worry."

Don't worry? Well, it would be easy for _him_ not to worry. _He_ wasn't the one facing an indeterminately long stay behind padded walls.

The judge cleared her throat. "After reviewing your records, I feel that it's appropriate to offer you two options. Because you have been a model patient at Arkham Asylum, and particularly because you haven't sought out contact with Edward Nygma, I feel that Arkham may be the wrong environment for you. Therefore, I am authorizing your transfer to the Gotham State Hospital where you can be assessed and treated, hopefully by people a little more responsible than those that have cared for you recently." She snapped a sharp glare in the direction of the benches as the two men choked back protests. "Or, if you prefer, you can be returned to Arkham Asylum, where you will take part in their new Henchgirl Recovery program. If you enter this program, the court will not refile the charges against you."

Jackie chewed on her lower lip as she thought furiously. Go to a new place, where the strange inmates might be a little more complacent, or back to Arkham, which was terrifying but where the psychopaths knew her name. To Gotham State, which might have better accommodations, or to Arkham, where they were keeping Eddie? The henchgirl program at Arkham sounded like something that they'd be putting Harley in without delay, which might be a good or a bad thing depending on her current attitude toward the Joker. On the other hand, with Arkham's army of corrupt doctors, maybe she could do something to make them let her out early.

"Miss Baker? Do you have a preference?"

"I'd like to go back to Arkham, please," Jackie said, wincing at the hiss of shock that rose from the benches behind her.

Relief softened the hard edges of the judge's expression. "In that case, you are formally remanded into the custody of the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane until you are judged to have regained your mental health." She smacked her gavel on the bench.

Jackie's lawyer bustled her to her feet and hurried her out of the room, followed closely by a pair of guards. "This is wonderful!" he chirped.

"Wonderful? Arkham is _wonderful_?" she said skeptically, wincing as the chains tugged on her casted arm.

"Of course! Legally, and I assure you that they'll be paying very close attention to legalities after having to drop all your charges, legally you have to be evaluated in two weeks. You're clearly not as disturbed as they seem to think. Once the doctors figure that out, they'll have to let you go. You could be back home in as little as six months!"

"How disturbed do they think I am?" Jackie asked.

"On a scale of one to ten? Fifteen," he said, guiding her toward a door flanked with armed guards. "Whatever you told that doctor in jail must have been pretty wild." He patted her good arm and backed out of the path of the guards as they closed in on Jackie. "If you need me, just tell your doctors that you want to see your lawyer. They have to let you meet with me. Good luck!"

He receded into the distance as the guards hustled Jackie down a set of dank-smelling concrete stairs and outside into her waiting armored bus. Once she'd been locked into place, the bus swung away from the courthouse and started the long trek back to Arkham.

Innocent. She was innocent! Well, acquitted, or the charges had been dropped or whatever, which was practically the same thing. She'd shoved Robin into a deathtrap, she'd robbed a man at gunpoint, she'd broken several hundred traffic laws during her stint as a getaway driver and none of it counted because they hadn't processed her correctly! America was truly the land of the free, thanks to easily exploitable technicalities. All of her mistakes had been invalidated by one sweeping stroke of bureaucracy. It was beautiful.

She rested her forehead on the cold metal grate blocking off the window and did her best not to giggle with delight. In just a few short months, she'd be free! She could walk the streets in daylight without worrying that a policeman would recognize her. She could go to parties and not worry that one of the guests was going to try and messily murder the rest of them. She'd get a nice little apartment, like the one that had burned down when Eddie -

Her train of thought screeched to an abrupt and horrified halt. Eddie. How could she have forgotten him? _He_ certainly hadn't had all of his charges dropped, if they'd even bothered to bring any against someone who was already under the penalty of several dozen life sentences.

"You okay?" Jackie looked up, through the mesh that separated the passenger compartment from the driver's seat and saw a guard peering at her with concern in his eyes.

"Huh?"

"You look sick. You okay?"

"I'm...I'm fine," she said, trying to keep the worry out of her eyes.

He nodded and settled back into his seat. "Let's get you back home."

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Where do I begin? I've done my best to make Gotham's legal system fit with America's in general, though even my lawyer pal admits that rules change so dramatically from place to place that it's useless to try and match specifics. I mostly drew from Maryland's laws, with a side order of anywhere else that had convenient regulations as well as things like the oh-so-appropriately named Baker Act of Florida. They really do make bread from baby formula in a few prisons because it's nutritious (sorta) and cheap. The fact that it tastes like a chunk of rancid cement is probably considered to be a bonus. _


	2. Hell is Other People

Living in a cell is never fun. Iron bars may not a prison make, but they certainly also didn't lend a free and happy atmosphere to any decorating scheme that made heavy use of them. Traditionally, the only ones that ever do have fun behind bars are bartenders.

Edward Nygma was certainly not having fun in his cell. It was past midnight, a time when all sane people and a good portion of the insane ones were taking the opportunity to rest up for a busy tomorrow that would be nearly identical to their yesterdays. By all rights, he should be sleeping too, and yet here he was, staring at the dimly lit ceiling, doing his best to remain absolutely still.

Five weeks. Five long, miserable weeks had gone by, and that thrice-damned orderly _still_ hadn't gotten bored and gone away. Every morning, at seven o'clock sharp, his door would open and a folding chair would _skreek_ open on his floor. And from that moment on, no matter where he went, the orderly trailed behind him like a large and mustached shadow. The end of the orderly's shift didn't mean the end of the watching, though. Oh, no, of course it didn't. He was an _escape risk_ and _had to be watched_, as the orderly oh-so-kindly reminded him every hour or so. When the man did eventually go home to whatever hellpit he lived in, he always made sure that the night guard set up a security camera right outside Eddie's cell, so he would even be watched in his sleep! And the bastard even worked overtime on the weekends!

The doctors were probably over the moon at the man volunteering to watch Eddie. None of the orderlies ever wanted to do one-on-one time with a rogue. They were probably so thrilled that he wanted to do it that they okayed everything else he wanted, including that thrice-damned camera, never mind the fact that the rest of the rogues' gallery escaped nearly as often as Eddie did! Okay, so he was a little more skilled than the rest at picking locks - okay, maybe a _lot_ more skilled - but that hardly warranted a twenty-four hour observation schedule. Even the Joker didn't have this much security around him, and he'd killed three doctors and who knew how many guards last year!

With a monumental flex of his will, he uncurled his hands from their tight, tense fists and tried to relax. Insomnia was hardly a new problem of his - when your brain was this fantastic, sometimes it took a little more effort to turn it off at night - and over the years, he'd acquired a wealth of tips and advice on how to get to sleep. _Relax_, they said. _Clear your mind_, they said. _Count your blessings_, they said.

Blessings. Right. Well, this March seemed to be rather balmier than most, because the draft that blew in from the ceiling of his cell was slightly warmer than usual. He wasn't tied down to the bed, which was good, though he'd be amazed at any other result after staying resolutely quiet and calm during every waking moment. They'd even backed off on the antipsychotics a little, which was definitely nice, considering that he didn't need any of them to begin with.

What he _did_ need was to talk to someone. It was useless to try and talk to any of his fellow rogues. Those conversations were invariably ended when amusement at his constant companion began to twinkle in their eyes. He could talk to his doctor, but what good had that ever done anyone? Besides, it wasn't like the orderly was doing anything illegal.

Ooooh, and wasn't _that_ the icing on the bitter little cake. The man had every right to follow Eddie around, to have him constantly watched, to sit in on his therapy sessions and bask in Eddie's frantic struggle to simultaneously obey enough of the rules to make the orderly happy while cunningly persuading the doctor to get him the hell _out of there_.

He wasn't going to be able to keep this up much longer. Even now, his hands were balling back into fists while his teeth ground together like an aircraft carrier being dragged down Main Street. And if this treatment was having this effect on _him_...well...what if they were doing it to Jackie? Arkham was dangerous when the doctors got ideas. He fully remembered all of the psychiatric fads as they'd blossomed over the years. Art therapy. Work therapy. Medication after medication, therapist after therapist, theory after theory had been tested on them - on _him_ - with no appreciable results. Even that small army of drill sergeants they'd brought in however many years ago hadn't done anything but make the rogues extremely angry.

So what were they doing to Jackie? He didn't know, but he had a pretty good guess from listening to Harley Quinn and the other sidekicks bitch about their therapists over the years. Medication, for one, an extra-large amount of therapy, for another, and of course, every waking moment of her day would be filled with reminders that she should abandon him and go back to her productive, law-abiding lifestyle. It probably wouldn't be that hard to convince her of _that. _After that fiasco at the convention, she probably wouldn't want to go on another heist again anyway.

Well, fine. If she left him, he could manage. He'd been alone before. He'd been alone a _lot_ before. If being alone was an Olympic sport, he could have won medals.

Hadn't he spent his childhood alone? Hadn't his intelligence set him apart from all the other kids and earned him bruises and black eyes along with his top grades? Not that his home life was any better. Oh sure, he had parents - parents who claimed to have stayed together for his sake, but who made every night a crying, screaming hell as they fought with one another about everything and anything. And the night that his parents had placed the blame for his existence firmly on each other - he'd never felt so alone as he had that night, curled in his pajamas, peering between the stair rails, knowing for the first time that no one really loved him.

He'd tried to convince himself that he didn't need people. He didn't need friends, so when the cliques turned their backs on him it didn't matter. He didn't need girls, so when he couldn't get dates in high school, it didn't matter. He didn't need parents, so when he moved out and they stopped speaking to him, it didn't matter. When his henchgirls were the only thing standing between him and Arkham, he gladly abandoned them. After all, it wasn't like he _needed_ them.

But then Jackie had come along - stubborn, cheerful Jackie who had fallen in with his lifestyle with only a few minor hiccups along the way. She stood by his side, even defending him that night in the opera when she had everything to lose by confronting the bats. Even before she'd put on a costume, she had tricked Batman into the other room of their lair and distracted him for just long enough so that Eddie could get away. And she'd told him her plan _in an anagram_ right in front of Batman's stupid cowled face!

She was perfect. Well, maybe not _perfect_ - a few more fighting skills would be nice - but she was everything he wanted in a companion.

And he needed a companion. He hadn't known how much he needed someone until she was already there. The long, dark, lonely nights curled up with a notebook had been replaced by long, cozy nights of laughter and stories and...other things that he refused to think about, because it would only make his enforced solitude seem ten times worse.

And if she left him..._when_ she left him...he'd be alone again, only this time it would be worse, because he'd always know what he had lost. He -

He sounded like the heroine of a badly-written romance novel. He snorted scornfully at himself. What was he _doing_? What was he _thinking_? Jackie wasn't leaving him, so why was he preparing for her to do just that? What was _wrong_ with him?

It was the camera, it had to be. Being watched for twenty-four hours a day was enough to drive anyone mad.

Well, enough was enough. He had to get himself and Jackie out of there. The first order of business would be to find out where they were keeping her, since running blindly through Arkham searching for her would get him nothing but an express ticket back to his cell. He had to find her, figure out how to get past whatever security might be around her, and get the two of them out of there before one or both of them went completely crazy.

* * *

Jackie stared blankly at the huge, grinning sunflower. "Welcome to the First Day of the Rest of Your Life!" it said in slightly drippy letters that had been stenciled into its hideously pink speech bubble.

She darted a quick glance at the orderly, waiting patiently by her side for the locked door in front of them to swing open. "Interesting artwork around here," she said. Interesting. What a wonderful word. It was the perfect all-purpose nothing statement that could mean anything the listener wanted it to mean.

"I hate that flower," the orderly grumbled. "That smile is creepy."

Jackie examined it again. On closer inspection, the sunflower's smile did look a little too manic to be comforting. She shifted her armload of Arkham-issued clothes and bedding to a slightly more comfortable position and waited, twitching at every noise, expecting the door to open at any second.

A full ten minutes went by, filled with nothing but the sunflower's bright, brittle smile. "This is stupid," the orderly snarled. "I told them to be here at eight to get you. What's taking them so long?" He strode forward and kicked the door sharply.

As he turned to walk back to his spot, the door slammed open and whacked the orderly on the back of the head. He stumbled and fell into a swearing, lightly bruised heap on the floor.

"You're late," said the doctor framed in the doorway. "I thought you were bringing her at eight."

"I _did_ bring her at eight," the orderly muttered rebelliously as he picked himself up.

"Thank you," the doctor said, in tones that contained one percent thanks and ninety-nine percent artificial additives. "You can go." The orderly stalked off without a backward glance.

The doctor sniffed superiorly at his receding back and turned to Jackie with an almost sincere smile on her face. "I'm so glad you decided to join us. Welcome! My name's Dr. Sohnlean, but you can call me Doctor Lily. Come on in." She stepped aside, clearing a small amount of doorway for Jackie to duck through.

The door slammed behind them with a rapid triple-click of locks engaging. "We'll let you drop your things in your room, and then we can head to the meeting. The others are waiting for us to start." She guided Jackie to a small white doorway leading to a small white room with heavy black grates over the lone window. There was no door in the frame. A small sign by the doorway read BAKER.

"As you can see, we operate on a no-door policy here," Dr. Lily said briskly. "Go on inside."

Jackie obediently went in and dropped her bundle on the bare mattress. "Good, good, now come with me. I'll introduce you to our other residents before we start the meeting."

They hurried down the hallway, stopping when they reached the small open area that was full of women sprawled comfortably on a variety of armchairs placed in a rough circle. Dr. Lily took her seat at the head of the group, while Jackie found herself an unoccupied chair toward the back.

"I'm sorry we're late, everyone. I'd like you to meet your new neighbor, Jacqueline Baker. Jacqueline - "

"Jackie, please," Jackie interrupted uncomfortably.

"We don't use nicknames here," Dr. Lily informed her loftily. "Jacqueline, this is Harleen Quinzel."

"Hiya, kiddo!" Harley chirped, waving her hand in a cheery hello. Jackie waved back.

"This is Felicity DuBois."

Felicity, whose blonde hair somehow managed to look fresh from the beauty salon despite the surroundings, smiled warmly at her. She looked familiar...had she met her before?

"This is Rose Laing."

Rose scowled darkly at her. _That_ was where she knew Felicity from. Rose, too. The last time she'd seen them, they'd been dolled up in their New Year's finery, arm-in-arm with Two-Face. Of course, they'd been calling themselves Angelica and Demonica at the time. She almost hadn't recognized them without their usual sequins and leather.

"This is Miss Melling."

"My name is Alice," the blonde insisted petulantly.

"You'll be Miss Melling until we find out your real first name," Dr. Lily said firmly.

"But Alice _is_ my real name."

Dr. Lily pointedly did not roll her eyes before she gestured to the last woman. "And finally, this is Margaret Sullivan."

Margaret, a sullen-looking brunette, waved a half-hearted hello.

"Who'd like to begin the meeting today? Anyone?" Dr. Lily asked hopefully.

"So who's your boss?" Margaret asked Jackie, ignoring Dr. Lily's instant frown of disapproval.

"The Riddler."

Margaret sighed and flopped back into her chair. "Hopin' she'd be another B-list buddy for ya, Mags?" Harley chuckled.

Fury flashed in Margaret's eyes. "He is not a B-lister! He's a genius! He's got all sorts of gadgets and he can _fly_, which is more than any of _your_ bosses can do!"

"Ladies," Dr. Lily warned.

"Mags is in love with Killer Moth," Harley explained airily to Jackie as Margaret fumed. "Waste of time, if ya ask me. He's a real moth now."

"Ladies," Dr. Lily said, a little more insistently.

"He is _not_! That...that big moth-monster-man is _not_ Drury!"

"Ladies!" Dr. Lily snapped, all composure gone. "We are here to _break_ your ties to those madmen, not to argue over them!"

"Says you," Harley fired back. "Mistah J loves me an' I love him. He's gonna break me out of here any day now, just you wait and see!"

"Sure he will," said Dr. Lily, as unconvinced as anyone who had noticed that Harley had been left behind during twelve of the last fifteen Joker escapes. Realizing that sarcasm hardly befitted a psychiatric professional, she summoned up her calm face and let out a deep sigh. "Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss?"

"I'd like to discuss when we get to go back to our old cells in the rogue's wing," Rose growled. "This place sucks and you can't do anything to make us quit loving our guys. Right?" she asked, getting an almost immediate "Right!" back from nearly everyone in the group.

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Right, Alice? Jackie?"

"Right!" Jackie agreed immediately, preferring the somewhat powerless displeasure of Dr. Lily over the barely contained fury of Demonica.

"Screw you," Alice grumbled.

"So let us go back already and let's be done with this nonsense." Rose slouched back in her chair, arms folded, glowering at Dr. Lily.

"You cannot and you _will_ not be housed in those cells again. It's for your own good, ladies," she barked over the rising tide of indignation. "Your relationships are not healthy!"

"You think love is unhealthy?" Harley snorted.

"I think being thrown out of a window is unhealthy," Dr. Lily snapped. "Or wouldn't you agree?"

Harley stuck her nose in the air and refused to answer.

Dr. Lily cleared her throat and flipped a page on her clipboard. "I understand that some of you feel like there's not enough to do here. You'll be happy to know that, starting tomorrow, you'll have the opportunity to attend some classes, as well as participating in some new activities. Oh, and this evening, we'll be taking some pictures of all of you. The program is funded by Wayne Enterprises, and the board there wanted to see what their contributions have gone towards."

"Translation: they're too scared to come here themselves, so they're making you send pictures so that they don't have to come into the spooky old asylum," Margaret grumbled.

"Make sure ya get my good side," Harley said, fluffing her pigtails.

"What good side?" Margaret muttered, not quite quietly enough.

"You want to say that again?" Harley demanded.

Dr. Lily flipped her paperwork closed. "Let's take a few minutes to reflect on things by ourselves," she said, getting to her feet. "Start thinking about what you'd like to discuss at this afternoon's meeting." Quickly, her composure cracking around the edges, Dr. Lily fled into the comparative safety of the nurse's station and slammed the door.

The others immediately got up and hurried off to their various rooms, with the exception of Felicity and Rose, who retreated to a corner of the main room to whisper urgently to one another. Jackie ducked inside her doorway and rested for a moment with her back pressed hard against the wall.

It wasn't going to work. Even if she had decided what to do - and she hadn't, not even after hours of thinking about it - would it really matter what she had chosen if the rest of the group was so adamantly against it?

Slowly, so she had an excuse to linger in her room and not be social, she moved to her bed and began arranging her things in the little room. There wasn't much to arrange, which was good, because there wasn't much of anything to arrange things on. The room's entire set of furnishings consisted of the wrought-iron bedstead, which had been thoroughly bolted to the floor, and a shelf built into the wall that was just large enough to hold her two spare jumpsuits and the standard-issue toiletry kit.

She began to smooth her rough sheets over her mattress while thoughts and arguments fireworked in her brain. Stay or go? Stay or go? A thousand reasons why and why not battled back and forth like a pair of toddlers fighting over a teddy bear.

She snapped the blanket out over the bed and let it drift gently down, tucking the edges under her thin mattress. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't her choice to make. Her lawyer had said that she'd be re-evaluated soon. The two-week evaluation deadline only had eleven more days left in it. Maybe, when they evaluated her, they'd declare her sane and set her free.

Could she really go free and leave Eddie behind?

The bed was made. She carelessly threw herself down on it, resting her head on her arm and staring at the wall. They would decide what they would decide, and after they decided, she'd make _her_ decision. Until then, she'd let her worries go and relax a little bit.

Felicity and Rose tore through her doorway, giggling madly. Jackie sat up just in time to see a sopping-wet Margaret screaming after them. They rocketed around the room, knocking everything off of her shelf and rampaging directly across her bed, regardless of the fact that she was still in it. Shrieking incoherently, the trio tumbled back out the door and disappeared.

Jackie sat in the wreckage of her room. Slowly, deliberately, she laid back down on the bed and clamped the pillow around her ears.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Eddie's troubled childhood was taken from the 1995 Detective Comics Annual. _


	3. Knowledge is Power

The handful of hours spent in the recreation room had previously been the Riddler's favorite part of his days in Arkham, if any activity that was merely a little more tolerable than the rest could truly be designated as a _favorite_. At the very least, it provided him with a few minutes of quality time with a puzzle book and a squashy old sofa to sit on.

Now even that had been denied him. If he sat in his usual spot on the sofa, the orderly would flop right down next to him. He'd claimed one of the armchairs - at least the orderly couldn't try to share _those_ - but it just wasn't the same. And who could concentrate on puzzles when they were constantly being _watched_?

For all these weeks, he'd kept his eyes and ears alert for anything that might lead him to his escape, or, failing that, a suitably horrible vengeance on the orderly. Bit by bit, scrap by scrap of information flowed to him from overheard conversations, stolen glances at paperwork and, occasionally, from the man himself. None of it was useful yet, but it would be someday.

_Michael 'Mike' Dunham_, he recited in his mind. _Lives on the south side of Gotham. Drives a '89 Lincoln Continental, blue. Single. Parents live in Utah. No siblings. No pets._ The door to the rec room opened and closed again almost immediately. Eddie didn't even bother acknowledging that he'd heard it. Now, how could he tie any of his hard-won information together into a plan to get him out of here?

"Edward!"

"Joker," Eddie said neutrally, aware of Mike's eyes trained on him with renewed interest. So, the Joker had managed to get himself out of solitary and back into the swing of things inside the asylum. Well, wasn't that just the perfect end to a miserable day.

"Who's your friend? I do hope you'll introduce us," the Joker cooed, settling back into Eddie's usual spot with every intention of staying there. He winked coyly at Mike, who ignored him in favor of continuing to stare at the Riddler.

Eddie's eye started to twitch.

"No? How rude. Perhaps I'll find something else to do." He eased himself off of the sofa and padded to a nearby bookshelf, perusing the four coverless paperback romance novels and the handful of secondhand magazines that made up the rec room's library. He began to hum, softly at first, then building in volume as he drummed his fingers on the bookshelf in perfect time with the song. "_Let all the others fight and fuss. Whatever happens, we've got us_," he sang, adding a little soft-shoe spin to his song. "_Me and my shaaaaaadooooooow_..." he crooned, waving jazz hands in the Riddler's direction. "Take it, Eddie!"

The only sound that came from Eddie was the sullen grating of his grinding teeth.

"Oh, you don't know that one?" the Joker said. "I know! How about this one? _Together again! Gee, it's good to be together again. 'Cause no feeling feels like that feeeeeeeeeeeling_...no?" He tapped a long white finger on his crimson lips. "_Just the two of us...we can make it if we try-y, just the two of us_..." He held a hand to his ear, waiting for Eddie to finish the lyric.

Eddie was well aware of what the next three words of the song were, but he would rather be filleted on live TV than open his mouth and sing them.

The clown pouted theatrically. "You've got to know _something._"

"How about you sing 'By the Window' and I'll help you out?" Eddie suggested blackly.

The Joker chuckled merrily. "Ah ah ah," he said, waving a scolding finger at the Riddler. "Threatening people isn't very nice, is it, Mr. Orderly?"

Mike the orderly grinned at Eddie from beneath his mustache, a long, slow grin that nearly matched the one on the Joker's face. "Nope. Guess someone just lost his rec privileges today."

Eddie was immediately propelled off the couch and out the door by the iron grip on his upper arm. "You two lovebirds have fun now!" the Joker called after them as the door slammed shut.

When the red clouds of fury had cleared slightly from his vision, Eddie found himself being quick-marched back to his cell. As he skittered along beside Mike, one of his canvas-shod feet got in the way of the other for just long enough for Eddie to lose his balance. He dropped toward the floor, stopping dead four inches lower as his arm was nearly wrenched from its socket.

This was nearly as bad as being dragged over the rooftops by Batman. No, maybe it was worse. At least Batman had the common decency to quit playing the game after he'd won. He scrambled frantically to get his feet underneath him as they hustled along.

"Hey, Carl," Mike greeted a guard.

"Hey," the guard smiled back, ignoring Eddie completely. "You still going on that date tonight?"

"You better believe it. Do me a favor? Get the camera set up for me so I can take off a few hours early."

"Sure thing." The guard strolled past them toward the steel door that barred the way into the security center.

He was going home early? He was _going home early_! Eddie felt the clouds of rage dissipate just a tiny fraction. Losing his recreation privileges was certainly worth gaining a few hours away from Mike.

Mike opened the cell door and shoved him inside. Eddie stumbled to a halt just before his knees hit the bedframe. "Watch your step," Mike said cheerfully.

If the heat in the Riddler's glare had been tangible, Mike would have spontaneously combusted. Instead, he leaned insolently on the doorframe and leered at Eddie. "Too bad your little girlfriend wasn't there to protect you, huh?"

Not only would he have spontaneously combusted, but the floor beneath him would have been melted into slag.

"Yeah, she's a cute one," Mike went on. "Too bad they moved her into that henchgirl wing. You won't be seeing her again for a long time." He slipped a hand into his pocket. "Unless, of course, you ask nicely." He dangled something small and colorful in the air.

Photographs. Eddie's mind was instantly ablaze with escape plans that flicked by like slides on a slideshow operated by an overcaffeinated shrew. Possibilities stacked themselves up and tangled into ever more complex and convoluted routes out of the asylum. Those little squares of paper just might be his ticket out of here. He mutely held out a hand for the pictures.

The orderly twitched them back. "You have to ask nicely," Mike reminded him.

"Please," Eddie said abruptly.

"You can do better than that. Pretty please," he suggested brightly.

"Pretty please," Eddie said in a dull, dead voice that did very little to disguise the raw hatred in it.

"With sugar on top," Mike prompted.

"Pretty please with sugar on top," he repeated mechanically.

"Do you promise to keep being a good boy?"

"Yes."

"Yes, what?"

He had never wanted to hit someone so badly in all the years that he'd been a rogue. Arms trembling with the effort to stay still, he growled "Yes, I'll be a good boy."

"Weeelll...maybe if you said it all together," Mike enticed, flipping through the photos.

"Pretty please with sugar on top and I'll be a good boy." The white noise of fury roared up his spine and engulfed his brain. (For the lucky few who have never heard it, the white noise of fury sounds like this: **HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ATE**.)

"Good boy," the orderly smiled. "I'll just leave this outside for you." He slammed the door and retreated to the outside of Eddie's large plexiglass window. Like most of the cells in Arkham, it had a few brightly colored sheets of paper taped to it to warn the staff about the inmate inside. Mike lifted one of these sheets up and sloppily taped a single picture underneath it with a large strip of masking tape torn from the roll in his belt pack. Then, with the picture secured, he tucked the top sheet firmly over it as camouflage. "You have a good night, now," he said, waving cheerfully before wandering off down the hall. Mere seconds later, the night guard was in front of his cell, setting up the camera once again.

Eddie waited until he left. Then, slowly, calmly, and not at all like a desperate man clawing at any shred of hope, he strolled to the window and leaned against it, staring casually down the hallway.

Across the hall, Harvey was leaning on his own window. "What did he tape to your window?" he graveled.

"Nothing important," Eddie lied.

"Oh, come on, tell us. _Pretty please_," he smirked.

"Shut your face. Both of them." He ignored Harvey's rude gesture and retreated behind the small safety of the paper on his window. With a deep breath to steady himself, Eddie took his first good look at the picture.

It actually was a picture of Jackie. He'd half expected it to be a fake. But then, giving him the real picture was certainly not part of any plan to help him feel _better_. At best, it would be a constant reminder of the companion that he couldn't have. At worst, someone official would find it taped to his cell and he'd get to experience a fabulous trip to the isolation cells coupled with a few bone-cracking reminders that breaking the rules was not appreciated.

He shook his head sharply and focused on the picture. Jackie was smiling. She was seated on a narrow bed with a dark green blanket. The sun glowed brightly in the heavily barred window behind her. Even her drab asylum grays seemed to pick up hints of the light streaming in.

He stared at the picture, trying to absorb every detail of it. The sun - was it morning, or afternoon? Knowing that would determine whether she was on the east or the west side of the asylum. The room looked odd, though - not like part of the asylum at all. It had a window, a large one, with a grate on it that looked like it had been forged in the dawn of time. The walls were white, not stone like in the cell blocks. And the strip of decorative molding running along the tops of the walls was...

_Wait a minute_. He refocused on the molding. Golden fleurs-de-lis danced between pitch-black plaster beetles. He knew that molding. He'd seen it before.

The medical wing! Not the current one - the old one, the one they'd abandoned when it became clear that Batman was going to fill every bed and then some every night. It only had eight or nine rooms. Eddie had spent an interminable amount of time in one, once, when the new wing was under construction. Traction left you with a lot of time to examine the decor in minute detail.

The old medical wing was on the southwest corner of the asylum. From where the sun was, Jackie was probably in...let's see...the third room along on the westward side. Perfect. He could get from here to there in less than five minutes.

Provided that he could actually get out, that was. Eddie rested his forehead against the cool glass and focused every neuron in his brain on finding a solution to this impossible puzzle. Above him, just visible over a curl of his dark hair, Jackie's smile shone out into the cell.

* * *

Jackie sat at the common room's long table, idly doodling on her blank white sheet of paper. Around her, gathered on the table's ancient benches, the other girls chatted about nothing much or stared out the window.

A mousy little man with a stringy combover staggered into the room under the weight of a small box of textbooks. He set them down at the head of the table and mopped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. Dr. Lily bustled after him, clipboard in her arms.

"Ladies, this is Mr. Chesterfield. He'll be teaching those classes I mentioned yesterday. Behave," she added sternly before hurrying back to the nurse's station.

"Ah. Hello," he said, swallowing nervously as every woman's attention turned to him. "We have quite a selection of coursework to choose from. First, though, I'd like to see where everyone is, educationally that is. Who can tell me the name of this country here?" He tapped the wall, where a multicolored map was hung with several strips of masking tape. "It's all right if you don't know the answer. Go on, give it a try." He waited expectantly for volunteers. No one ventured a guess. "How about you, with the pigtails?"

Harley snapped her gum. "Sudan."

The man blinked. "Good. Ah...let's try a different subject. How about biology? Can you name me three bones in the human body?"

The gum snapped again. "Sure. Humerus, hyoid, sustentaculum tali."

"You seem very well-read," Chesterfield said suspiciously.

"Ya don't get to be a doctor by sleepin' through school."

Jackie glanced around the table to see the other girls giving each other knowing looks. Apparently she wasn't the only one who had heard that Harley had, indeed, slept her way through school...ah..._slept_ her way through school, that was.

"A doctor," Chesterfield said flatly.

"Yep."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't chew gum in my class, _doctor,_" he said, nettled, as Harley blew a defiant bubble at him. "How did you even get gum, anyway?"

The bubble noisily collapsed. "I got my sources," she shrugged, repositioning the gum between her teeth.

"Let's move on to something else. Who can tell me the square root of 256? How about...you," he said, pointing to the one woman in the room that wasn't eyeing him with boredom or disgust."Yes, you," he said as Jackie looked up, startled. "256. Square root is?"

"Sixteen," she answered without a moment's hesitation.

Now he was getting irritated. He yanked a math book out of the box and rattled off problem after problem at her, which she solved almost as quickly as he'd read them out. Math was just a big puzzle, after all, and if you knew the rules it was easy. Besides, after all the math classes required for her computer science degree, she'd racked up so many hours behind her calculator that the numbers had worn off.

Chesterfield threw the book back into the box. His combover was beginning to curl away from his sweaty scalp. "Exactly how much schooling have you had, miss?"

Jackie shrugged. "Five years of college."

"And you?" he demanded of Harley.

She grinned at him. "Four years of undergrad and four years of med school."

"And the rest of you?"

"Gotham U for four years," Rose and Felicity chimed together. Felicity went on, "We were theater majors. We're not quite as distinguished as Dr. Quinzel, of course." Dr. Quinzel smirked and popped her gum. "But we get by," Rose added.

He eyed Margaret and Alice, who were being sullen in two opposite directions. "I think we'll need different textbooks," he mumbled, his assumed superiority deflating like a month-old balloon. "Is there anything in particular that you ladies want to learn about?"

"Chemistry!" Harley suggested brightly.

He swallowed hard. "I, uh, don't think they'll let us study that."

"Bummer."

"Philosophy?" Felicity asked.

He shook his head mutely.

"So what classes can ya teach?"

Chesterfield ferreted around in the pocket of his argyle sweater vest and took out a piece of paper. Harley twitched it out of his hand. "Algebra...history...life skills. _Life skills_?" she snorted. She balled up the paper and tossed it into the corner.

"It's not as bad as it sounds. We can...well...we can help you learn how to get a job once you get released," he suggested hopefully.

"Pass," Harley said.

Jackie could see a lost cause when it was losing right in front of her face. Mr. Chesterfield wasn't going to last much longer. So much for classes - not that she was looking forward to them as anything but a distraction from the constant round of bickering between Margaret, Harley, and Harvey's girls.

She rested her head on her hand and idly continued doodling, not really paying attention to anything but her thoughts. The ten days until her evaluation seemed more like ten lifetimes. Time in this asylum seemed to slow down and stretch out until an hour took a day or more to live through. If only they'd hurry up and evaluate her so that she could decide what to _do_!

What if they freed her there and then? She froze, eyebrows raised. What if they took her to a courtroom and told her she was free to go home? She wasn't sure that she could turn an offer like that down. But how would she ever see Eddie again?

Did she want to? Maybe it would be better to just cut all ties with him and walk away. It would be easier to leave if she didn't have to say goodbye. Maybe never seeing him again was for the best.

But _could_ she leave? Sure, Eddie was a felon tap-dancing on the edge of insanity. But he was also the only man she'd ever loved. How could she walk away from everything they had? How could she go back to sleeping alone instead of in his arms?

If only there was some sign to tell her what to do!

She glanced at the page in front of her. The pen clattered to the table as she stared down in shock. Row after row of tiny, freshly-inked question marks stared back at her.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Joker's musical extravaganza is comprised of Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra's 'Me and my Shadow', 'Together Again' from the Muppets Take Manhattan, and 'Just the Two of Us' by Bill Withers. Harley 'slept' her way through school in 'Mad Love'. In other news, I started a tumblr where I'll be posting a bunch of different stuff, including a few exclusive stories. In fact, there's one there right now! It's at checker-boards dot tumblr dot com. _


	4. Good Grief

Things in Dr. Lily's Henchgirl Recovery Program were not going very well, which was rather like saying that the average category 5 hurricane dealt out a little bit of storm damage.

Chesterfield had gone home after his first morning of 'teaching' and had never returned. The art therapist had quit after one of the girls dipped her long, frizzy ponytail in bright blue paint. The woman had left a trail of blue droplets behind her for a full forty-five minutes before she discovered the damage and fled, sobbing. The chef that Lily had hired for cooking classes had never even shown up.

To fill the massive gaps in the schedule, Dr. Lily had opted for group therapy three times a day. Jackie drew her legs up into the tattered old armchair and rested her chin on her knees, watching the rest of the women indulge in their usual round of bickering while Dr. Lily tried desperately to regain order. "Ladies. Ladies, please," she whined.

Jackie did her best to tune them all out. She had more important things to worry about than who had short-sheeted Margaret's bed (Rose) or who had put the large dead spider on her hairbrush (Harley). April first was still a week away, and she hadn't come to any conclusion about what to do.

Freedom seemed like a beautiful, priceless jewel dangling just out of her reach. All she had to do was wait for it to come to her, and then she'd have a life again.

A life without Eddie. On the other hand, wasn't that the kind of life that she was living now? She'd expected him to break her out _weeks_ ago. Okay, he'd been pretty beat up during the last heist, but he had to be fully healed if she was. She'd be ready to take her cast off any day now, and _he_ hadn't even had any bones broken! Where _was_ he? He should have been itching to escape Arkham as soon as he could.

Maybe he had. As much as she hated to think of it, maybe he'd already broken out of Arkham and left her behind, like the rest of the girls he'd tossed aside over the years. She'd thought that he loved her, but then, so did Delilah and the other two, and probably a good portion of the rest of his crowd of ex-henchgirls as well. And besides, he'd gotten rid of_ them_ after they failed him, hadn't he? And hadn't she gotten him caught? Wasn't it her fault that he'd been dragged back to Arkham again?

Hot tears of self-pity welled up in her eyes. She blinked them away before any of the other girls saw and did her best to distract herself from thoughts of Eddie.

That, at least, was easy enough. Margaret and Harley, cuffed into matching restraint belts, faced off across the circle of chairs. One too many cutting remarks and snippy comebacks had escalated their conflict to all-out war. They shouted at one another over the noise of workmen installing doors on their rooms. (Dr. Lily's no-door policy had been abruptly revoked when it was discovered that no doors meant no way of keeping homicidal henchgirls out of each other's rooms.)

"Drury_ is_ still out there," Margaret snarled, straining against her restraint. "He can't be Charaxes. He _can't_!"

Jackie buried her head in her kneecaps. If she had to hear one more word about Drury Walker she was going to scream. Of_ course_ he was Charaxes. Even Jackie had heard the rumors that Walker had sold his soul to a demon or something in order to be turned into a, well, a killer moth.

"Enough," Dr. Lily barked. Jackie raised her head to see a newly-arrived orderly standing by, one hand idly tapping on his belt pack full of every kind of medication that was guaranteed to short-circuit a rebellious brain. "I have had enough of this constant fighting," she snapped as Margaret and Harley glowered at one another. "You two are going to bury the hatchet right now."

"I'll bury a hatchet in her face," Margaret grumbled.

Dr. Lily snapped an imperious glare on the orderly. He unzipped the belt pack. As the pack opened, Margaret's mouth clamped shut. Lily waved a hand dismissively at the orderly, who resumed his position behind her. "The two of you - and you two as well," Lily added, glaring at Rose and Felicity, "are going to stop this fighting. Do you understand me?"

A stubborn silence filled the air.

"Do you _understand me_?" Lily repeated as the belt pack slowly began to open again.

"Yes," they grumbled obediently.

The pack zipped firmly shut. "Good. Now, our first item of business is - "

"Where's Alice?" Rose interrupted, glancing around the circle.

"Alice won't be joining us. Now -"

"Why?" Felicity said, leaning forward with interest. "Did you let her go back to the rogues' wing?"

"Of course not!" Lily pasted a sickly smile on her face and toyed with the pages on her clipboard. "We found a more...therapeutic location for her."

"Finally figured out that Jervis kidnapped her, huh?" Harley smirked.

The clipboard clattered to the floor. "You knew about that?" Lily stared at Harley, eyes wide with horror.

"Course I did."

"You knew she didn't belong here all this time and you never said anything?!"

"Course I didn't. She danced with _my Puddin_'," she sneered, as if dancing with her Joker deserved a much harsher sentence than a mere three months in an asylum for the criminally insane.

The main door of the wing slammed open. A man in inmate grays stumbled into the room, closely followed by a harassed-looking orderly. "You stay there," he ordered the inmate, who grumbled something under his breath as he leaned himself up against the wall. "Dr. Lily, I have a message for you." He bent down and whispered it in her ear.

"What?" she hissed, glaring at him with the kind of venemous stare that would have earned an inmate double meds.

"Carlson said to," he replied defensively.

She sighed. "All right. You can go." The orderly breezed past his delivered inmate and let himself out. "Come have a seat," Lily invited.

The inmate raised his head. He looked awful. An ugly greenish-yellow bruise lurked sullenly on his cheekbone, and his left eye was blacked in an almost perfectly fist-shaped a start of surprise, Jackie realized that the strange man was Grief.

More interesting than his injuries, though, was the complete disappearance of that bunny-rabbit helpless look in his eyes. What had happened to him since they'd come back from South Carolina?

He slouched over to a nearby chair and lowered himself gingerly into it, wincing as he tried to get comfortable.

"Rough week, Troy-boy?" Harley asked congenially.

"Yeah. By the way, thanks for leading the Bats right to me." He scowled at her. "I'll be sure to return the favor someday."

She shrugged. "Had to talk to ya somehow."

"You never heard of a telephone?"

"Sorry. Just tryin' ta help."

Dr. Lily cleared her throat. "I see you already know some of our residents. Ladies, this is Troy Grey. Troy, you know Harleen?"

"We've met," Troy said coldly.

Dr. Lily continued the round of introductions around the circle. When it was Jackie's turn, she gave him a little wave hello. He nodded curtly back at her.

"...and that's everyone," Lily finished.

"So what is this?" he asked bluntly.

"Oh. Well, this is the Henchgir...uh...Hench_man_ Recovery Program, I suppose, in your case. We're here to help you stop being a henchman."

"Great. I'm not. Can I go now?"

"Troy,_ really_," Lily said, as exasperated as anyone might be with a former colleague who had joined the ranks of the costumed ex-psychiatrists that infested the city.

"Really," he replied grimly. "I quit. So what happens next?"

Lily frowned at him. "After all you've done, I do not believe that you decided to walk out on Sorrow for no reason."

"_No reason_!" he yelped, before getting control over himself. "We had a fight. I left." He slouched lower in the chair, staring at his fingers as they picked at the fraying upholstery.

"What did you fight about?" Lily asked, a hint of concern in her professionally polished voice.

"I really don't think that's any of your business, Lily," Troy replied, using his own smooth and polished therapy voice without moving out of his sullen slump. He looked up, carefully feigned innocent curiosity widening his eyes. "What are you doing back with the henchgirls, anyway? I thought they moved you up to the big leagues."

Lily rose to her feet, lips pressed in a tight, thin line. "They moved me to where they thought I could do the most good," she said coldly. "I think that this is the wrong environment for you."

"I agree completely."

She stormed into the nurse's station and slammed the door.

One by one, the others got up and wandered off. Even Harley and Margaret, arms held stiffly in their leather cuffs, stalked off to opposite ends of the hall. Troy didn't appear to notice. He stared out the window, idly rolling a ball of chair fluff between his fingers.

Jackie edged over and slid into the chair beside him. "You look terrible."

"I feel terrible," he muttered, carefully arranging himself against the back of the chair. "Nightwing cracked my ribs."

Jackie hissed in sympathy. "Did they get Sorrow too?"

"Hell if I know." He began to rake a hand through his hair in irritation and jerked to a halt, grimacing with pain. "I haven't seen her for two weeks."

"Seriously," Jackie said, leaning closer. "You really left her? You weren't just saying that?"

"She wanted to stay in Gotham. Can you believe that? Batman, the cops, this_ place_ - all these horrible things keep happening to her and she refuses to leave. I mean, look what happened to me!" he said, gesturing at his multicolored face.

"Because you stayed in Gotham?" His eyes narrowed as much as they could around the swelling. "Just asking," she added defensively.

"It wasn't exactly my choice to stay in Gotham," he snapped. "And things would have been a lot better if Harley Quinn had stayed out of it." He drummed his fingers on the rapidly disintegrating arm of the chair. "I'm going to do whatever it takes to get out of here. You should too."

"Huh?"

"Get out of Arkham. Legally. Go back to a normal life. Get out while you can." He thumped a fist into the chair's arm, sending up a small puff of thick yellow dust from the rotting foam inside it. "All these people, these.._.rogues_...Sorrow, the Riddler, the Joker, they don't give a damn about people like you and me. All they care about is what_ they_ want. I read about your arrest in the papers," he said abruptly. "We weren't back from the beach for even one week before you were caught. Look at you. You're in Arkham right now with a broken arm because the Riddler wanted to go out and rob somebody _so badly_ that he picked the first target that came to mind. It didn't matter that you weren't trained. It didn't matter that you weren't ready. He wanted it so off you went, straight to Arkham. What's he going to want tomorrow?" He stared at her, bruised eyes locked on hers. "Are you really ready to catch a bullet just to prove that you love him?"

"I..." Jackie stammered. It wasn't right, what he was saying. Eddie hadn't done that. He picked the convention as a first, easy heist for her...hadn't he? Four days of training wasn't very much, but it was more than the nothing that Troy said she'd gotten. Eddie had done his best to keep her safe...

Hadn't he?

She examined Troy again. This man in front of her, this angry, sullen man, was not the Troy she'd seen a handful of weeks ago. What the hell had Sorrow done to him?

"I thought you really loved her," she said softly.

"I do," he said unthinkingly, then swore. "I _did_," he corrected himself firmly. "I did what I could for her. I tried to help her. I_ tried_. I couldn't. She just...she just wouldn't _listen_. I can't do it anymore."

"And you don't know where she is?"

"No," he grumbled. "Neither does anyone else. That's how Harley got me caught - she came sniffing around, looking for Sorrow, and Nightwing followed her." He sighed, a short, sharp sigh that must have sent another shockwave of pain across his ribcage. "I don't know where she is," he continued, after a brief, red-faced pause. "I don't want to know. I don't," he insisted, with a firm voice that didn't match the lurking, desperate worry in his eyes.

An orderly poked his head into the wing, saw Troy in his chair, and started over. "You remember what I said," Troy said as he clambered to his feet. "Get over him and get out of here. You deserve more than this."

The orderly took his arm and guided him out of the door. Jackie watched them go with a profound sense of unease gripping her heart.

There were so many reasons to listen to him. No more being locked up. No more running down dark streets. No more worrying that every noise in the night was a hero about to break her legs. A chance at a new life, a job, a home of her own.

But...Eddie. And not just Eddie, but the rest of them, too. Well, not all of them - Joker was terrifying, and the Scarecrow was a jerk, but the rest of them were...well...nice, or at least a close approximation of it. Hadn't they all been welcoming from the moment that she walked into the Iceberg? Hadn't they talked to her and bought her drinks and been the one social group in her entire life that hadn't immediately closed her out?

Look at all that Eddie had done for her. Didn't she owe him? He'd kept her out of Arkham on Halloween. He'd gotten the ex-Qs to back off and get out instead of shooting her. He'd put up with her parents moving in and forcing him to go on their endless tourist trips.

On the other hand, look at everything that Eddie had done _to_ her. Where to begin? He'd broken into her house and burned it down. He'd taken her to the opera, where he hadn't told her about the various traps he'd laid or that he planned to let Robin beat him to a pulp before taking him out, and her infuriated interruption of the beating had gotten her a free ticket to the Batman and Robin Broken-Arm Spectacular when they had eventually caught up with them at the convention. And the convention! He'd taken her there, mostly untrained, and expected her help regardless of whether she was ready for it. He'd nearly gotten her killed more times than she was comfortable thinking about. He'd taken away her real life, bit by bit, until all she had was him.

Didn't she deserve a chance to pick up where he'd made her leave off?

She wandered to the window, staring at the tiny green sprouts just starting to show on the hard, brown earth. Behind her, unnoticed, Harley Quinn watched her with suspicious eyes.

* * *

No season in Arkham was particularly good, but springtime was the worst. Winter and summer did their best to make the asylum unlivable by freezing and roasting everyone trapped indoors. Fall left inmates and staff alike impatient and frustrated under the influx of new interns sitting in on therapy sessions. But springtime - oh, springtime was miserable.

The sun shone brightly down on the asylum, the heat and warmth bringing all the flowers and plants back to life. Soft white clouds drifted in an impossibly blue sky. At any moment, baby bunnies would appear from their holes and take their first few tentative hops in this glorious new world. Life, hope, and joy sprung from everything the inmates could see out of their highly secure and sometimes electrified windows. Since none of the rogues were that big on life, hope, or joy to begin with, it wasn't nearly the pick-me-up that it seemed to be for the staff. The cheerfulness and whistled happiness of the orderlies as they went about their springtime business was enough to make any seasoned rogue wince with distaste.

Except, of course, for Poison Ivy, who traditionally spent the first few days of spring basking in the sun like an oversized green cat. Today she had pulled a pair of chairs over to the window, lounging indolently on one with her feet neatly crossed on the seat of the other. Lazily, eyes still closed, she twitched the top of her jumpsuit open a little farther. The gentle green curves of her skin glowed in the warm golden light.

Eddie sat stiffly in his armchair, examining Mike out of the corner of his eye. If the man stared any harder at Ivy's chest, he was going to pop an eyeball out of its socket. For the first time in weeks, he wasn't being watched. Now would be the perfect time to slip away, if it weren't for the dozen or so pesky guards that would be around at this time of day, not to mention the small army of orderlies and locked doors that he'd have to sneak past.

No, he couldn't leave, but at least he could relax enough to think again. He closed his own eyes, reveling in this tiny bit of solitude.

Springs squealed as someone sat down on the couch near him. "Hey."

Eddie slitted an eye. Troy Grey was perching on the edge of the sofa. A pair of bruises marked his face. From the careful, stiff way he was sitting, he'd had a recent run-in with the Batman or one of his irritating little associates. "Hello," he muttered, closing his eyes again.

"Are you escaping soon?"

Eddie's eyes flew open and immediately darted to Mike. The man was still ogling Ivy. It was highly unlikely that he'd heard him. And yet... "No," he said firmly.

"No?"

"No. How's Sorrow?" he asked, hoping to get him started on a monologue about how much he missed her or some other overly dramatic nonsense. He could certainly manage to nod and smile through a lovesick recitation without actually having to pay attention.

"How the hell would I know?" Troy snapped. "I don't know how she is. I don't _care_ how she is. Why does everyone keep asking me about her? I bet no one comes up and pesters you about Jackie."

Eddie regarded him coldly. "No, they don't, because they know that I don't know. I haven't seen her since we were captured."

"Oh." Troy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "She's okay. Still has a cast on, but probably not for too much longer. I saw her this morning in the Henchgirl Recovery Program," he explained as Eddie listened curiously. "They tried to get me to join it, too."

"And they let you leave?" Eddie said, one eyebrow raised. Harvey's girls had flat-out refused to join the program, too, but they'd still been forcibly relocated.

"They had to. I'm not a henchman anymore." He gingerly slid back into his seat.

"You're not," Eddie said flatly.

"Right. I haven't even seen Sorrow for two weeks." He shifted uneasily. "No one else has, either."

"What?" Eddie snapped.

"We had a fight. Oh, you wouldn't understand. Forget it."

"And what, pray tell, wouldn't I understand?" Eddie said, dangerously calm.

Troy sighed. "She won't leave Gotham. But you won't either, so who cares, right? Let's just let Batman break our bones every few months and spend the rest of our lives rotting in a cell. Sounds like a great time to me."

"You left her because she wouldn't leave Gotham?" Eddie asked, ignoring his melodrama.

"Yes."

"You're an idiot."

"Me?_ I'm_ the idiot for wanting us to live a safe, normal life somewhere else?"

Eddie rolled his eyes. "So because you couldn't have your fantasy, you abandoned her."

"Oh, like you're one to talk."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're the genius. _You_ figure it out."

Eddie glared at him. He hadn't abandoned Jackie, he just hadn't saved her yet. His patience, which was worn down to the tiniest of thin threads, was beginning to give way. He darted a quick look at Mike. The orderly was still hypnotized by Ivy's bare skin.

"Look, I appreciate everything that you've done for us. For her," Troy corrected, when Eddie flashed him a skeptical look. "Now I'm just asking for this one more favor and you'll never hear from me again."

"Oh? And where will you go?"

"Why do you care?"

"I don't."

"Just break me out. Please._ Please_," he added hopefully.

"No." Eddie leaned back in his chair, eyes firmly closed. He didn't have a solid plan to escape yet, and even if he had, he certainly wouldn't want to discuss it within earshot of any staff, especially Mike._ Go away. Just go away before he hears you!_

"Oh, I see. Because you don't want to, you won't even consider it. You're just as selfish as she is."

Eddie's fragile hold on his self-composure snapped like a suspension bridge in a tornado. "Before you go throwing around accusations of being selfish, maybe you should look at yourself first. You want to leave Gotham and live a happy little picket-fence life? Sure, it'll be good for you. No one will look twice at _you_. What about her?" Eddie glared at him as he opened his mouth to speak. "Shut up. How long do you think she'd last among a bunch of bored housewives? How long do you think it would take for them to ask why she never took off her gloves? Five, ten minutes? What was your plan for her in your fancy new house? Keep her locked up and hidden away? She can get enough of that in Gotham, but at least she has friends here. You want to talk about selfish? You want to take everything away from her - her friends, her home, her entire lifestyle, and for what?"

"To get away from Batman! And Arkham! And all the rest of the shit that happens in this city!"

"If you think Batman wouldn't track you across the country to get her back, you are severely mistaken," Eddie pointed out. "Crane broke out and went straight, even got a job teaching upstate somewhere under a new name. Batman went up there and dragged him right back. A different zip code isn't going to save her from Batman." He narrowed his glare on Troy, who was starting to look a little pale. "And let me ask you this. Do you think she even wanted you around in the first place? Was it her that took you to the costume shop and dressed you up? No. You did it all by yourself because _you_ wanted to, and now you want her to leave Gotham because _you_ want to, and you want me to break you out of Arkham because _you_ want to. You want to get out of Arkham? Get yourself out."

Troy's bruises were rapidly blending into the growing reddish-purple of his complexion. "I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Oh really? You're the psychiatrist. Tell me, how many times has she tried to kill herself? And you walked out on her. She's been missing for two weeks. She's probably dead by now, and by your own admission you don't even care. If that's not selfish, what is?"

Troy snarled something incoherent and flew into Eddie's chair, intent on punching the Riddler square in the gut. Eddie, who had been expecting it, twisted to the side and caught Troy in a headlock. The two of them twisted and writhed to the ground, lashing out at one another with all the pent-up energy available to two men who had been pushed far beyond the horizons of sanity by their incandescent fury.

A flailing elbow caught Eddie directly in the mouth. His jaw clacked shut on his tongue. Spitting blood, he surged up and belted Troy in the ear. Troy staggered backward. Eddie followed up with a firm shove to the chest that propelled Troy backward into a wooden chair, which tipped over and sent him sprawling on the ground. Ivy opened one eye just long enough to ensure that he wasn't going to bother her before returning to her sun-drenched doze.

As Eddie stepped forward for round two, Mike's sweaty, meaty hand wrapped around his arm. "Starting trouble again, Nygma?" he growled.

"This one started it," another orderly called from his kneeling position on Troy's legs. "Guess you shouldn't pick a fight with cracked ribs, huh?" he commented cheerfully as Troy wheezed beneath him.

Mike dragged Eddie over to the small nurse's window. Wordlessly, the nurse on duty passed him a selection of bargain-basement medical supplies.

As Mike grudgingly dabbed blood from Eddie's split lip with a folded piece of gauze, Eddie stared off into the distance. He wasn't thinking about the sting of rubbing alcohol on his face, or the warm metallic taste of blood in his mouth, or the sidelong stares of interest from the rest of the rogues' gallery. He wasn't certain if he could stand this building much longer. One lone word rang in his head, bouncing from neuron to neuron like a frisking lamb.

_Escape_.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Batman's retrieval of Scarecrow happened in The Batman Adventures Annual #1. Drury really did sell his soul to a demon to become a giant moth in Underworld Unleashed, not that it helped him much, since he was ripped in half by Superboy Prime during the Infinite Crisis. Whoops. Alice first appeared in my story 'Rejoicing', where she did indeed dance with the devil in the pale moonlight - or the Joker, however you'd like to put it. All of the offscreen Sorrow/Grief/Harley stuff happened in a story that may or may not be posted depending on whether anyone wants to read it. If you like reading my stories here, may I politely suggest that you check out my tumblr and the small collection of other stories and Bat-stuff I've accumulated there. It's at checker-boards dot tumblr dot com._


	5. Sugar and Spice

It's been said that trust has to be earned. It's been said that trust, once broken, can never be repaired. In fact, a lot has been said about trust, and absolutely none of it applied to anyone living in the costumed-criminal realm of Gotham. The only thing that Gotham's rogues could be trusted to do was to do what was best for them, personally. Relying on a rogue to do what you wanted them to do had about the same success rate as the average salmon trying to leapfrog up Niagara Falls, even with the lure of fabulous amounts of cash or the threat of horrific violence.

The truce ordered by Dr. Lily had lasted less than twenty-four hours. Constant proximity to each other had shredded the fragile peace faster than a room full of cats attacking an expensive pair of pants.

Harley hadn't bothered to get caught back up in it. Not that she was necessarily done with tormenting Mags - it did pass the time, after all - but right now, she had more important things to worry about. She leaned on the wall, taking in the scene in the main room.

Demonica and Margaret were standing nose-to-nose, screaming obscenities at one another. At any moment the fight was going to turn physical - _there_ it was, a slap to the face delivered with more fury than fighting skill. Demonica, cheek blazing red, seized Margaret by the collar and swung her into the wall.

Felicity bounced to her feet, ready to assist if needed. Orderlies were standing by, waiting impatiently for Dr. Lily to give the okay for them to fling themselves into the fight and break it up. Jackie, however, was curled up in her armchair, not paying attention to anything around her.

This was troubling. Harley had overheard - well, stealthily eavesdropped on - most of the nonsense that Troy-boy had come up with the other day. It was ridiculous. Just because Sorrow didn't love him like the Joker loved her, he got all bent out of shape about it. And leaving Gotham? Who out of their right mind would do that?

But Troy's tirade was only a small part of what troubled her. The real issue was that Jackie seemed to believe it. She had gotten a little quieter, a little more pensive, a little less eager to chime in with the other girls. It was almost as if she was seriously considering going straight.

Harley Quinn was a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. The littlest things could make her all warm and fuzzy inside. Even Harlequin romance novels (yes, she'd heard all the jokes) left her misty-eyed and grinning. As the rogues gallery's only champion of true love, Harley considered it her duty to foster that love wherever it might sprout (with the exception of certain hopeless cases, like Mags and Moth-guy).

After seeing Eddie and Jackie together so often during the past few months, she'd assumed that, like her and Mr. J, they would be together forever. They still could be, provided that Jackie didn't take what that spoilsport Troy had said too seriously. Maybe Jackie just needed the right kind of encouragement.

Harley slipped a hand into her pocket. Metal, warm from the heat of her thigh, slid smoothly across her fingertips. She idly stroked it, making her decision.

There was a chair shoved up beside Jackie's. Harley casually settled herself down in it. "How ya doin', kiddo?"

"Fine."

"Yer missin' the fight." Across the room, Demonica clocked Margaret in the head with a cheap table lamp, which promptly bent in half. Margaret laughed derisively and, ducking out of the grip of an orderly, tackled Demonica to the floor.

"Am I?" Jackie said vaguely. "Oh."

"What's really goin' on, huh? You can tell me." The metal slid gently under her fingertips again.

"Well..." Jackie darted a quick glance around the room. Everyone else's attention was totally focused on the two combatants. "You won't tell the others?"

"Cross my heart," Harley said cheerfully.

"I was...kind of...thinking about...not being a henchgirl anymore," Jackie finished in a rush. She stared at her lap, hugging herself tightly and chewing nervously on her lip.

So it was true. Harley frowned at her. "Thoughtcha loved Eddie," she said flatly. "He sure loves you."

"Does he?" Jackie lowered her voice. "I haven't seen him in weeks. I thought for sure he'd try to break me out of here by now, but he hasn't! I don't even know if he's still in Arkham. And even if he did break me out...I don't know if I could go with him."

"What's stoppin' ya?"

"They said they wouldn't refile my charges if I entered this program. Doesn't that mean that if Arkham lets me go, I could go home?"

This she could answer. "Why wait for them to decide?" Harley asked, crossing her legs delicately on the seat of the chair.

"What do you mean?"

"Lemme ask you this." Across the room, Demonica bit Margaret's arm and was rewarded with an eardrum-shattering howl of pained rage. "You sign any papers when you came back here?"

"Well, sure. My lawyer said it'd be easier to get me out if I went voluntarily, and since I didn't have any charges, they would let me sign myself in. Why?"

"You just signed your get-out-of-jail free card, that's why." Harley smiled lazily at Jackie, who was suddenly all ears. "You don't really wanna sit around here for the next year while the docs get their acts together, do ya?"

"They wouldn't really take a whole year, would they?"

"It took 'em longer than that to let Arnold free the first time he ditched Scarface." It had taken Harley's doctor substantially less time to let _her_ out the first time she'd feigned sanity, but then, Arnold Wesker couldn't exactly use feminine wiles to manipulate _his_ psychiatrist.

"But breaking out is illegal, isn't it? If I break out, wouldn't they be able to arrest me again and bring me right back here?"

"Nope. Breaking out isn't against the law. See, you're voluntary. You escape, and if you stay out past when you would have been released, they automatically discharge you. They only have to call the cops if you're here involuntarily under criminal charges, and you're not, so they won't."_ Probably_, Harley added silently. Sure, they called the cops every other time that a costumed criminal or sidekick escaped, but maybe they wouldn't this time. And even if Jackie's escape _wasn't_ completely legal, and the cops brought her back anyway - well, Jackie could hardly walk away from Eddie with a brand-new criminal record to keep her by his side, so what was the problem?

"That's crazy!"

"That's Arkham," Harley shrugged.

"You're sure that's how it works?"

"I did work here, y'know."

Jackie bit her lip again, fidgeting with a decorative button that was coming off of the cushioned arm of the chair. "But...but what if Eddie really doesn't want me around anymore?" she asked in a small voice.

"What if he does?" Harley replied, slipping the warmed metal from her pocket. From her fingers, silver and shining, dangled Jackie's unicorn necklace.

"_Oh my god_!" Jackie snatched it from her, clutching it in her cupped hands with her mouth frozen in an O of disbelief. "How did you...I thought that..."

"They brought your stuff over from jail. It's been in storage here for weeks. Put it on," Harley urged. "They'll never see it if you keep your jumpsuit buttoned up."

Jackie stared down at the tiny unicorn as if it was a message from an angel. Harley silently congratulated herself on a job well done. After all, she was sure that Eddie would have thought to do it himself if he'd known Jackie was acting like _that_.

"Is he okay? I mean, you talked to him, right?"

"Sweetie, I've been in here just a couple more days than you have, and before that I was out in Gotham. I haven't talked to him since Christmas. But," she said over Jackie's sudden disappointed look, "that doesn't mean anything when you've got guys on the inside. Mr. J's got a coupla guards that'll carry messages for him."

"But Eddie _is _okay?" she asked again.

Harley grinned. If Jackie wasn't a woman on her way to becoming a die-hard henchgirl again, she'd never seen one before - and she saw one every morning in her mirror. "Sure. He's fine!" Harley lied. In fact, when Mr. J's pet guard had smuggled her the necklace, he'd told her that the Riddler was teetering on the edge of a massive breakdown. But what Jackie didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Jackie looked around once more for the guards, stroking the smooth metal of the unicorn's flank with the tip of her thumb. All six of them were doing their best to pull the fighters apart, bellowing orders over their insulted and furious shrieks. Dr. Lily rubbed the bridge of her nose, eyes closed tightly, as if it might make all of her problems disappear before she raised her eyelids again.

"Let me," Harley said, pulling the necklace out of Jackie's hands before she could protest. In an instant, she draped the chain around Jackie's neck and fastened the clasp tightly. "There ya go," Harley said, satisfaction surrounding her words like thick honey.

"Thank you," Jackie said, hurriedly buttoning her jumpsuit over the necklace.

Harley grinned and tousled her hair. "Any time."

* * *

Eddie waited in line, numbly enduring the repetitive nudging of Mike's dinner tray in the small of his back. He gently prodded his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. After Grief's elbow had introduced itself to his face, his lip had swelled up until it had nearly doubled in size.

"Whaddaya want?" a whip-thin woman asked, dark eyes bright against the copper skin of her face.

His mouth hurt too much to talk. Eddie mutely pointed to the pan of dry brown pieces of chicken. She dumped one on his tray, added a scoop of limp, soggy vegetables, and waved him onward.

He slouched to the end of the line, waiting his turn to scoop a lukewarm carton of milk from a huge cooler full of nearly melted ice. Behind him, Mike's voice sounded. "Hey, good-looking."

"Hey yourself, handsome," the cafeteria worker said. "How are things?"

"Not as good as you look," he flirted back.

"What can I get you today?"

"The pasta. There's no pepper in it, right?" he asked. Something in his voice - a little hint of urgency under the flirting - flared into Eddie's brain and set the alarms to DefCon 2. Two months of waiting and listening and hoping and now - at last - a tiny glimmer of hope had appeared.

"No, honey, no pepper. Promise."

"Okay, then."

Eddie casually scooped up a carton of milk. As his hand passed unobtrusively over the tiny condiment rack, he flicked a small handful of pepper packets into his sleeve. Maybe it would be nothing. Maybe Mike just liked his pasta bland. But maybe...just _maybe_...these pepper packets might be a chance to escape.

He trudged along the snake of inmates making their way to their tables and seated himself in his usual spot at the rogues' table. Mike, close behind him, budged in between the Riddler and Two-Face, settling his bulk on the bench without caring much who he might be shoving.

"Well, look who's here!" the Joker beamed from his spot at the head of the table. Eddie peeled open his milk carton, pretending not to hear him. "It's Felix and Oscar. How's it going, boys? Any new hijinks to report?" He held his hands to his cheeks, miming dramatic shock. "Eddie! What _have_ you done to your face? Have you been fighting again? Naughty, naughty," he chided, tsking like an overbearing mother.

Eddie maneuvered a bite of his bland, stringy chicken around his swollen lip, wishing with every fiber in his being that Harley had been allowed to hang around and give the Joker the attention that he so desperately craved. Maybe then he'd be able to get through a meal without having fantasies of ripping the clown's leg off and force-feeding it to him.

"Say, Mike, ol' buddy ol' pal," Joker crooned. "Nice mustache."

"Thanks," Mike grunted suspiciously.

"It's so nice to finally see some diversity around here. Tell me, how does it feel to be the first walrus with a minimum-wage job?"

Mike's attention snapped instantly from his food to the Joker. A hot red flush began rising up his face. "You watch your mouth," he ordered.

"Did they pull out your tusks before or after they hired you?"

"Shut. Up," Mike growled. In his lap, under the table, Eddie slowly peeled a pair of pepper packets open.

"And how long did it take you to learn how to walk on your back flippers?"

Mike slammed his hands on the table and launched himself to his feet. "You had better shut your mouth _now._"

Everyone looked at the Joker for his reaction. Everyone, that was, except for Eddie, who took the opportunity to dump the pepper packets into Mike's open milk carton.

"Aw, he's cranky. Does the little walrus need a snack?" The Joker held his piece of chicken up between two fingers, shaking it enticingly. "Here walrus walrus walrus..."

Mike found himself caught in the perpetual quandary that most people found themselves in when dealing with the Joker. Should he keep the peace by allowing himself to be humiliated, or should he force the clown to shut his face? Of course, forcing him to shut up meant getting close to him, which was a dangerous prospect in a lunchroom full of plastic silverware and easily brandishable lunch trays.

"**True irk, pinniped pap**," Eddie muttered quietly. Perhaps it wasn't the greatest anagram in the world, but with only fifteen minutes left of the meager half-hour allotted them for lunch, he had to make do with what he had.

"What was that?" Mike snapped, taking the opportunity to pretend to forget about the Joker in order to chastise the Riddler.

Eddie blinked innocently. "What wath what?" he lisped around his swollen tongue.

Mike glared at him suspiciously and flopped back down, continuing to stuff his lunch down his throat. He tipped the milk carton to his mouth and sloppily swallowed a long, gulping drink, wiping his lips dry on the back of his sleeve. Eddie forced himself to take another bite of food as if he wasn't desperately watching Mike out of the corner of his eye, hoping for a miracle.

Mike paused, chewing his pasta thoughtfully. A little tendril of hope edged with glee uncurled itself in Eddie's brain as he noticed a tiny spray of lumps rising out of the skin around Mike's mouth. The orderly swallowed hard and gulped another swig of milk. His eyes widened. A low gurgle, like a badly draining garbage disposal, leaked from his open mouth. He gasped, wheezing for air, and threw himself backward off of the bench. One flailing hand caught his dinner tray, which instantly spun upside-down and splatted heavily into the floor. Mike clawed his way to his feet and rushed for the door. Red-faced, with blotchy, itchy hives erupting on every visible bit of skin, he thudded into the hallway and disappeared.

A janitor immediately hurried over to mop up the mess. Eddie, with a small, serene smile on his face, took another careful bite of soggy carrots. Freedom was within his grasp. Not tonight, of course - the night guard would be there to set up the camera soon, and he didn't think he'd make it back to his cell in time to fully put his plan in motion.

It wasn't as if he was in any particular hurry, though. Mike would be bound by the rules of the asylum, and the rules were crystal clear when it came to injuries on the job. Mike, like any other seriously injured employee, would find himself barred from the asylum for three full days while he recovered. (Like most bureaucratic orders, this one had little to do with caring for the health and safety of their employees. An injured orderly meant an orderly that was that much less likely to stop a rampaging rogue.)

Or maybe Mike would die. That would be quite nice, except for the thought that a mere near-lethal bout with anaphylactic shock wasn't nearly enough vengeance on the man. Oh well. If he lived, Eddie would deal with him after he got out of this godforsaken asylum.

Two-Face's coin spun into the air and landed with a practiced _thwap_ on his outstretched palm. "Nice one," Harvey muttered out of the side of his mouth. "That guy was an asshole."

Eddie nodded his thanks and continued eating, unable to keep the corners of his mouth from quirking up into an impossibly smug smirk. He'd finish his dinner, get some rest, and then tomorrow - oh, tomorrow! - he and Jackie would break out and go home.

Home. What a wonderful thought. A bed with springs that hadn't been raided almost bare over the years to make lockpicks. A bedroom with heat! A kitchen full of food that didn't come out of industrial-sized cans. And best of all, a henchgirl to share it with. What more could a rogue ask for?

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: The laws that Harley mangled regarding escape from mental institutions were taken from North Carolina's legal codes. Felix Unger and Oscar Madison are from the Odd Couple. Eddie's anagram translates out to 'I put pepper in a drink'. Pinnipeds rock. _

_I also wanted to take a moment and say that I really didn't intend to fish for compliments when I asked if anyone was interested in reading the next Sorrow story. I asked because the next story is going to be brutal and long and traumatic and I didn't want to emote all over the keyboard if no one wanted to read it. So! Since some of you are interested, I'll go ahead and write it. _


	6. Drawing Up a Plan

The most beautiful word in any language is Yes. Yes brings couples to the altar. Yes grants degrees and accolades upon the deserving. Yes is responsible for every job and every relationship that has ever existed.

But this kind of a Yes pales in comparison to the ultimate Yes, which is the Yes you force upon the world as they persistently tell you No. Flaunting your proven superiority in the face of everyone who ever doubted you is one of the most intoxicating feelings there is.

The Riddler was extremely familiar with the power of the forbidden Yes. Yes in the face of No had gotten him fame (well, infamy), fortune, and a fair amount of happiness as well. Was Mike out of the picture for two more days? Yes. Had Eddie been left alone for the first time in weeks? Yes, to the extent that one was ever truly _alone_ in Arkham. And soon, he'd be answering one of his favorite questions - Can I escape? - with that glorious, shimmering word: _Yes._

To the casual eye, it looked as if he was doing what he usually did in Arkham's bare-bones recreation room. He sat alone at the corner table, the one with the bolted-on chairs. A puzzle book lay splayed out in front of him. His stick of charcoal danced over it. Upon closer inspection, one might note that he wasn't writing in the puzzle book at all. Instead, he scribbled madly on a blank page carefully removed from the back of one of the tattered romance paperbacks. Eddie hunched over it, focused entirely on every tiny detail as he marked it with his stick of charcoal. It had to be perfect. It had to be flawless. It had to be-

The table bounced as someone sat heavily in one of the chairs. Eddie threw a protective arm over his work and glared up at the intruder. Troy Grey sat there, a third bruise splashed over his cheek. The rims of his eyes were an angry red underneath the remains of his older bruises. "Hi," he said tentatively.

"I have nothing to thay to you," Eddie lisped around his split lip and swollen tongue.

"I wanted to say...I mean...I thought about what you said, and I came over to...apologize. You were right. I was just too angry to hear it." He looked up hopefully like a puppy waiting for a biscuit.

"Apology accthepted. Now get lotht," Eddie advised, bending back to his little piece of paper.

"No! No, you were _right_." Troy grabbed his hand. The charcoal stick skidded wildly across the paper, leaving a thick black streak across his painstaking work. Eddie spat a curse and dropped it, yanking out of Troy's desperate grip. "You know what she's capable of, and no one's seen her in days! Weeks! I have to get out of here. I have to find her. _Please_," he begged, tears standing out brightly in his eyes. "I have to find her before she...it's all my fault. I never should have left her. _Please_."

"Thorrow's probably fine," Eddie said, eyeing the clock as his time ticked away.

"Probably?" Troy's eyes began to narrow angrily again. "So what, that's it, you think she's _probably_ fine so that should be good enough for me?"

Eddie fought against the urge to put his head in his hands and scream. He didn't have _time_ to deal with a half-crazed lovesick sidekick and he really couldn't afford to get involved in another fistfight right now. "What do you want from me?" he asked wearily.

"Help me get out of here. Tonight," he added, staring hopefully at Eddie. "Please?"

Eddie allowed himself one long, deep sigh. There were a thousand reasons to tell him no, the most pressing one being the fact that the boy had just ruined half an hour's careful work. However, there were three extremely good reasons to let him come along. He knew the asylum layout just as well if not better than Eddie did. Troy had never found himself in the role of disposable-escapemate-to-be-tossed-to-the-guards, and if Eddie had to introduce him to that role, it would be enough of a surprise that Eddie might get away scot-free. But most of all, he just wanted to be left alone to finish his work, which wouldn't happen until he gave in.

"Okay. Tonight. Be ready," Eddie hissed, flipping his paper over to the unblemished back side. "Now beat it."

"Thank you," he whispered reverentially. Then, with a wink, he shot to his feet and stalked off. "Fine! Be like that!" he called behind him, storming off to the window to glare outside.

Eddie bent his head back to his work. It had to be perfect, it had to be flawless, and now it had to be done in a quarter of the time that he'd allotted for it.

* * *

The Riddler lounged idly against the wall of his cell, peering down the hallway with a not-really-interested look of boredom on his face. His stomach grumbled. He ignored it. Skipping dinner was part of the plan, even as hungry as he was.

Oh, well. He could eat whatever he wanted when he got home tonight. It wasn't like he was used to eating much at mealtime anyway, since having Mike as a tablemate turned his stomach.

The night guard trundled by, pushing an ancient camera on a wheeled tripod in front of him. "Mike?" he called, peering into the cell. "Where's Mike?"

"Sick, I guess," Eddie shrugged, carefully enunciating around his injured mouth. "**Tonight is peace**."

"Enjoy it while you can," the night guard advised, locking the wheels of the tripod in place. "Be right back."

The camera was in place, positioned close to the plexiglass window of his cell. The guard looked him over once more, shrugged, then picked up the camera's power cord and began the long hike around the corner to the hallway's lone electrical outlet in its locked box.

_Nownownow_NOW! Eddie leaped to the door, yanking it noiselessly open. A small, folded pad of paper that comprised chapters one and two of one of the rec room's much-abused romance books fell quietly to the ground, bearing a deep dent where the door lock had tried to push through it. Eddie darted outside, using his foot as a doorstop so that he wasn't locked out of his cell. He stretched out as far as he could, scrabbled under the paper for Jackie's picture, and ducked back into the cell with his prize clutched tightly in one hand.

So far, so good. Frantically, counting down the seconds in his head, he peeled the tape from the picture and snatched the careful drawing from under his pillow. In no time at all, the charcoal sketch was taped securely in front of the camera's lens. Was it aligned correctly? Would the guard bother to look at the glass in front of the camera? He never had before, and thanks to the old camera's bulk, most of the important bit of the glass was obscured from casual passersby. He'd just have to hope that the guards were just as unobservant as ever. He dove into bed, burrowing under the blankets like an extremely cold mole. He popped his head out, feigning a casual rest, and saw the folded wedge of paper on the floor.

Paper of any sort was not allowed in the Riddler's cell. If the guard saw it on the floor – if he came in to retrieve it -

Nightmare visions of a lost escape fizzled in his brain as he scrambled out from under the thin gray blanket. He dove to the floor, scooped up the stray bit of paper, stuffed it down the front of his shirt, and flung himself back into bed with the speed of a really dedicated Ferris Bueller impersonator.

The night guard wandered back. "You still in there?" he called. Eddie obligingly poked his head out from under the blankets. "Huh. Thought I heard...oh well." He tapped the button on his radio. "Camera check...uh...camera 34."

"Broadcasting," the radio hissed. "He's in bed?"

"Yep," the guard said. "All tucked in like a good little boy. Nighty night, Nygma." He chuckled his way down the corridor, pleased with his biting wit.

Eddie, who had heard better attempts at mocking him from children on streetcorners, stayed absolutely still, scrunched under his blanket. Night would fall, the orderlies would go home, and all that the security staff would see in his cell would be the same thing they expected - a black-and-white still image of a bundled lump in the blankets, poorly displayed on their fuzzy forty-year-old tiny televisions. After so many weeks of seeing him do nothing all night long, they might not even bother checking up on his screen at all.

The plan had worked perfectly. Best of all, the guard hadn't even noticed his stealth riddle! (The important thing was to leave a riddle. If the guard was too stupid to pick up on it, that was _his_ problem, not Eddie's.)

Time never rushes when you need it to. Time is a sadist, slowing down so that you can savor every moment of the dentist's drill in your mouth and speeding up until the moments you wish would never end flicker and die like spent fireworks.

The six hours that waited between now and midnight proved to be six of the most frustrating hours that the Riddler had ever endured. Every noise made him twitch and jump with anxiety. Had they noticed? _Would_ they notice?

The night guard wandered past his cell, not really bothering to look inside, trusting the camera to do his job for him. Eddie waited until he couldn't hear the man's shoes clicking on the linoleum. Then, as quietly as he could, he sprang from the bed and picked his lock, scurrying into the hallway like a mouse planning a frontal assault on the refrigerator in a house full of cats.

He walked (not ran - he'd save his energy for later, if he ran afoul of some cops before he got home and burned this incriminating jumpsuit) down the hallway.

"Hey!"

Eddie turned at the hoarse whisper. Troy was seated on his bed, bouncing one leg nervously on the ground. He leaped up and rushed to the window. "Okay, let me out!" he urged.

"Why should I?" Eddie hissed, starting to move away.

Troy's face pinched with desperation. "If you don't let me out I'll yell for the guards."

The Riddler rubbed his forehead. Troy _was_ only a sidekick, and a new one at that, and he really had no reason to know the unwritten rules of an escape. Rogues didn't rat each other out no matter what kind of enmity existed between them. Rogues didn't yell for the guards no matter who was currently escaping or pounding them into a pulp. On the other hand, Troy was certainly unstable enough to completely ruin Eddie's escape, so his breach of etiquette would have to be ignored.

This time, anyway.

"Fine. Jutht be quiet." Eddie picked his lock, keeping an ear out for the night guard's return.

Together, darting looks down every corridor for approaching guards, they made their way to the front lobby and Arkham's only exit.

"What now?" Troy whispered, gesturing at the receptionist diligently typing up forms at his desk.

Eddie lisped quick instructions into his ear.

Arkham's receptionist never had too much to do. Anyone responsible for answering the phone and minding the visitors had a pretty open schedule when they worked in a place that no one ever wanted to visit or call. Still, he did have _some_ responsibilities, like taking notes while the orderlies processed new inmates,which Eddie and Troy knew all too well since they'd repeatedly found themselves on the other side of Jimmy Li's helpful little bits of paper.

A high-pitched voice rang down the hall. "Jimmy! We need you in intake!"

"On my way!" he called, snatching up a pre-collated intake clipboard and hurrying down the hall, nearly tripping over a fallen frond of the fake rubber palm plant perched in the hall.

When he had gone, the palm plant shook and disgorged two gray-suited inmates. "Your girl voithe ith terrible," Eddie muttered as they bolted into the lobby.

Troy stuck a hand under the desk and felt for the unlock button. The main doors clanked open. The slow creak of the hinges sounded like a symphony to Eddie.

They dashed into the night, shuddering as the chilly wind bit right through their thin, sweat-dampened jumpsuits, and quickly circled around to the southwest. The old medical wing stood before them, its long, lurking shadow looking oddly insignificant against the looming brick bulk of the modernized asylum. Eddie crept to the third window along and peered inside.

Jackie lay there, fast asleep, her curly brown hair spread in a tangled fan on her pillow. A smile of triumph broke across Eddie's face. After so many days and weeks of waiting, she was finally _there_, almost close enough to touch.

An elbow to his ribs jolted him out of his thoughts. "If you're ready? I'd like to get out of here before we get caught," Troy hinted, hugging himself for warmth.

The builders of old Arkham had done their best to make sure that their facility would withstand any kind of high-caliber craziness that its residents could throw at it. Thick cast-iron gratings covered every window and shielded every door. Over the years, many of these gratings had been replaced with high-density screens, electrified bars, and many other tools of the correctional officer's trade.

The windows on the old medical wing hadn't been touched. Eddie picked the ancient padlock and dropped it on the ground. He grabbed the bottom of the grate and pulled it up.

Or, at least, he _tried_ to. It refused to budge. Without a word, Troy seized the other edge of the grate and added his less-than-considerable strength to the effort.

"I don't need your help," Eddie hissed.

"Shut up and pull!"

They strained together in the darkness, the cold iron leaching chills into the bones of their fingers. Finally, with a sound like a rhinoceros rolling in a pile of cheese graters, the built-up grime of ages separated abruptly and the grating flew upward.

"Hold this," Eddie ordered, ignoring Troy's immediate protests as he slid the window under the grate open. He eeled into the room and crouched by Jackie's bed. At any minute, her door could open for an orderly to check on her. "Jackie," he hissed, shaking her shoulder. "Jackie, get up!"

She stirred irritably under her blanket. "Go 'way," she mumbled, stuffing her head under the pillow.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Eddie ripped the pillow from her head, slapped his grimy hand over her mouth, and tickled the back of her neck.

_That_ did it. She yelped, muffled under his hand, and stared up at him with confused panic in her eyes. He waited until she recognized him and took his hand away.

"Eddie?" she whispered, stunned. Then, with a whirl of blankets, she was out of the bed and clutching him in an embrace that would rival that of a toddler clutching the family dog. "Mmph mph mmph," she said into the chest of his jumpsuit.

"What?" he wheezed, trying to breathe around her iron grip.

She looked up at him. Tears in her eyes glimmered in the moonlight. "You didn't leave me," she said softly.

"Of courthe I didn't!" He pulled her in closer and hugged her fiercely.

"Guys?" They broke apart and rushed to the window, where Troy and his cracked ribs were fighting a losing battle with the heavy iron grate. "I'm gonna drop it!"

Eddie vaulted back outside just as Troy let go. As he crossed the windowsill, the grate swung down and landed directly on Eddie's shoulderblades. He wheezed with the sudden impact of filthy iron across his back.

Two sets of hands shoved the grate back up. Eddie swung through and managed to get his hands on the grate before it slammed back into its frame. "Come on," he urged. Jackie hoisted herself over the windowsill, shivering in the damp night air.

The grate thudded gently back into place. Eddie grabbed Jackie's hand and the three newly-freed rogues raced toward the far-off fence. Freedom sung its siren song in the back of their minds, nearly blotting out the wailing shriek of the real sirens sounding the escape alarm inside the asylum.

(_to be concluded_)


	7. Epilogue: The Twit

Michael Dunham had enjoyed the last six weeks about as much as the average cat enjoyed being thrown off of a cliff into a dump truck full of dogs.

To begin with, the Riddler had escaped from Arkham right under his nose! Well, okay, technically he and his nose had been a good ten miles away at the time, recovering from his bout of severe allergic shock under the watchful eyes of the nurses at Gotham General. But what did that matter? He'd been less than attentive – he _should_ have seen the Riddler slipping pepper into his meal, dammit! - and he'd suffered the consequences.

There hadn't been many repercussions at work, of course. Oh, there had been the occasional muttered snicker at his failed attempt at keeping the Riddler under wraps as he moved among the inmates at the asylum. But there had been no official censure, no reprimand, no black mark in his record. (The night guard who hadn't noticed the charcoal-daubed paper filling in for Eddie had not been so lucky.)

At home, though, it was a different matter. Nygma had broken into his house – not once, not twice, but so many times that he'd lost count. Every time, he left a little calling card of his affection for Mike.

It had started small, with little quarter-sized bits of paper inscribed with question marks left all over his house. It had taken him days to dig all of them out. He was still finding the goddamn things in his shoes, his pockets, and even in his wallet.

Slowly, bit by bit, the Riddler had stepped up his campaign of harassment. Once, all of his furniture had been glued in a pyramid in his back yard. When his shoelaces were replaced by cooked spaghetti, he knew who to blame. When his car refused to start because the engine had been neatly disassembled and laid out in a giant question mark on the lawn, he knew who was responsible.

For six long, horrible weeks, he'd arrived home knowing – just _knowing –_ that the Riddler had been there, messing with his stuff. He'd walk in the door, neck prickling with dread, and find that his television had been glued to the ceiling, or his kitchen had been covered top to bottom with riddles written in ketchup. One night, he'd even found question marks and derisive commentary scribbled over all the good bits of his porn magazines.

He'd moved across town – twice - and the Riddler had followed him each time. He'd called the cops, and they had come – but the Riddler hadn't. It was almost as if he knew when the cops were going to be watching his place. But that was ridiculous...wasn't it?

And the city's so-called vigilantes were no help at all. The cops had at least bothered to show up the first dozen times he'd called them. Batman hadn't even _once_ dropped by to see what was going on. And yeah, there had been that big gang war down on the south side, but they were _always_ fighting. The Batman and his friends could try to stop it all they liked, but they weren't going to achieve anything. Meanwhile he, an innocent citizen, was being preyed on by a supervillain and _no one cared_. And after he'd gone to all that trouble when Batman told him to keep Nygma in Arkham this time...

He'd even blown quite a large part of his salary on a sophisticated set of motion-detecting security cameras to watch his doors and windows. When he'd arrived home that night, confident that at last he'd know how the madman was getting in, he found that all of the saved footage had been replaced with a perpetually looped tape of the Riddler wagging a scolding finger and saying "Naughty, naughty!" The cameras themselves had disappeared, only to reappear one by one in various places – his mailbox, the glove compartment of his car, the inside of his oven – and of course, all of them were completely destroyed.

Well, enough was enough. He was going to catch that son of a bitch tonight if it was the last thing he ever did. And when he did...well, the Riddler would never get another chance to escape from justice again, that was for damn sure. He let his fingers slide reassuringly over the large, heavy gun tucked in the pocket of his thin work scrubs.

Remembering last night's little gift – a selection of rotting vegetables in question-marked green-ribboned gift baskets – he took a deep breath and plugged his nose. Then, with a rattle of the half-frozen doorknob, he flung the door open and flicked the light on.

His living room was black. What had happened? Had Nygma painted the place? He promptly flung himself backward into the front yard, fumbling for his epipen as he realized what the bastard had done.

Pepper. Pepper lay in drifts on his furniture. Pepper was glued to his walls with god-knew-what. The floor, the windowsills, hell, even his basket of laundry was covered top to bottom with pepper. The only bit of his carpet that was still visible was one long, curved line – a perfectly drawn question mark.

He spent the next few hours on his cell phone in various levels of scream. He called the police – not that it would do any good, since they hadn't even shown up the last three times he'd called them. He called Mighty Maids – again – and agreed to pay double overtime if they came to clean his house as soon as possible. The odd looks they gave him as they scurried inside with their cleaning supplies did very little to calm him down. And then, because he needed to scream at someone, he called the police again and cursed at the dispatcher for not sending a cop car to his home quickly enough. When he threatened to call the media and expose them for the lying, lazy scumsuckers that they were, the dispatcher hung up on him!

So he called the media too. They, at least, said they'd be there as soon as they could.

Laughter and chatter from the crew of maids echoed from his open windows. Mike sat on the curb, ignoring the chilly concrete beneath him as he lit a cigarette, fingers trembling with rage. The Riddler had gone too far. He could have _died_! If he hadn't been holding his breath – if he hadn't had an epipen -

He took a long, calming drag on the cigarette. It would be okay. The cops would _have_ to pay attention to attempted murder. Maybe now they'd get off their lazy asses and get to work finding Nygma's latest hidey-hole.

A chorus of shrieks erupted from his house. He craned around just in time to see the half-dozen maids scrambling out of his house, eyes streaming with tears. "What? What happened?" he demanded, hurrying over to them.

The head maid, eyes nearly as red as her hair, sneezed repeatedly. "Pepper," she sniffled. "Pepper in the ducts. The furnace kicked on and blew it everywhere." She wiped her streaming eyes on the sleeve of her shirt. "You're gonna need all your ductwork cleaned."

"Well, I'm paying you, aren't I? Get to work," Mike demanded.

"We don't do ducts. And sir, if I can offer you some advice?" She sneezed once more, delicately, like a cat. "End this prank war. Someone's gonna end up getting hurt."

Someone would, and it wouldn't be him. "Fine. Who _does_ clean ducts?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Check the yellow pages, I guess." The flock of maids began moving back toward their van.

"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Where the hell are you going?"

"Home. There's no use trying to clean in there. Anything we clean is just going to get covered with pepper again," one maid volunteered.

"And anyway, it's not safe for my girls. Once you get the ducts cleaned, we'll come back. Whatever you paid us for tonight, we'll put toward that, okay? I'll write it down so I don't forget." She patted her apron pocket and frowned. "Corrinna, do you have my pen and pad?"

The tiny, enduring flowers of paranoia bloomed in every corner of his mind. Pen and pad. Hadn't Nygma said that? Pen and pad pat, or something. He'd come out with some kind of word jumble and it had led to nothing but pain and misery for him.

Well, he wasn't going to get caught the same way twice. Before the woman knew what was happening, he had her down on the ground in one of the standard restraint holds he'd been taught when he'd been hired at the asylum. "Where is he?" he snarled.

"What the hell?" the woman spluttered, spitting out an unintended mouthful of dead, dry grass.

"Nygma. You work for him. Don't try to deny it," he insisted over her protests. If the cops weren't going to protect him, he'd just have to do it himself. "_Where is he_?"

"Mister, I don't know what you're talking about!" the woman wailed.

"Get off her right now, buster." A pair of arms, strengthened by decades of housework, yanked him onto the ground. The woman that the head maid had addressed as Corrinna loomed over him.

He swung to his feet and plowed into her, kicking her knees out from under her and pinning her to the ground. "So you're in on it too, huh," he growled, leaning his forearm against the woman's throat. "You're all working for him, aren't you? You've been working for him this whole time! You can tell him that I'm done playing games. You can – _erk_!"

With a snakelike twist, Corrinna spun out from under him and scooted backward, kicking him hard in the face with one tennis-shoed foot as she got out of range. He spat blood, snarling, and surged to his feet.

The maids retreated to the safety of their van, slamming the door in his face. He picked up a discarded pushbroom and brought it down on the windshield with a satisfying _crunch_ of safety glass.

The van began to roll back out of his driveway. Oh, no. He wasn't letting them get away _that_ easily.

The broom smashed through the driver's side window, sending broken glass flying through the air as the women shrieked in terror. As the driver scrambled to get away from him, he reached through the hole and opened the door. Maids spilled frantically out of the car as he climbed inside and took the keys.

Right. He slid back out of the van and stormed toward the sobbing knot of women crouched around their injured comrades. The gun was in his hand, and the Riddler's gang was right in front of him. "I'm going to ask you one more time," he growled, letting the gun barrel swing menacingly from target to target. "_Where is he_?"

"Who are you looking for?" one of the maids toward the back asked, a quivering note of absolute terror ruining her carefully calm voice.

Like she didn't know. That was what really made him mad. If they'd just owned up to what they'd done, if they'd just tell him where the goddamn Riddler was hiding, he wouldn't have to do this!

They weren't going to listen until he proved he was serious. He picked a woman in the front – young-looking, scared, easy to break – and aimed the gun at her kneecap. "You tell me where he is, little lady, or you're going to regret it," he promised softly.

And at this wonderful, picturesque moment, the silence of the night was ripped apart by blaring sirens and flashing lights. A pair of cop cars screeched to a halt in front of his house mere fractions of a second before a truck from Channel 5 slid into place across the street. Cops, reporters, and camera crew skidded to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk as they took in the scene.

"Mr. Dunham?" one officer asked.

"That's me," Mike offered, keeping his gun trained on the women. "Took you long enough to get here."

"Can you put the gun down, Mr. Dunham?" another officer asked.

"They work for the Riddler," he explained, not taking his eyes off them.

"No we don't!" yelped a maid.

"Shut up!" Mike snapped. "I've just about had it with your lies."

"All right, all right," the officer said soothingly. "Mr. Dunham – Mike – you can put your gun down. We're here to protect you. Let us handle them."

Mike dropped the gun and stepped back, smiling with the anticipation of seeing justice be served. In an instant, he was belly-down on the ground, cuffs snapping tightly around his wrists. "What the hell are you doing?" he bellowed as a cop kneed him in the shoulderblades.

"Oh thank God! He's crazy!" a maid shouted. "He tried to kill us all!"

"He was going to shoot us!"

"We tried to hide in the van, but he broke out the window -"

"-and he kept asking us where some guy was -"

"-a goddamn _lunatic_ -"

"They work for the Riddler!" Mike screamed as a pair of cops hauled him to his feet. "Don't let them get away!"

"You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to -"

"I didn't do anything wrong!"

The cop took in the panorama of terrified women, broken glass, and concrete splattered with blood. "Sure you didn't," he snorted, stuffing Mike into the backseat of his car.

Mike jerked angrily against his cuffs, watching indignantly as the women were fussed over by the media and helped into newly-arrived ambulances.

Movement by the side of his house drew his attention. There, in the shadows! Something moving. Something..._green_.

The Riddler, carefully keeping a concealing shrub between himself and the circus of media and police, stared at him with a quiet smile of triumph on his face.

"He's here! The Riddler!" Mike screamed, the sound reverberating around the inside of the firmly secured car. "He's _here_!" He threw himself at the door, setting the car rocking on its shocks as he tried to batter his way out of the car. Blood from his broken nose splatted in polka-dot streaks on the back of the plexiglass divider separating him from the steering wheel.

A car ghosted up in the alley behind his house. The Riddler tipped his hat politely, smirking all the while, and trotted over to it, seating himself regally in the back.

Mike slammed his shoulder against the door. "HE'S OVER THERE! THE RIDDLER!" he screeched at the top of his lungs.

A cop detached himself from the crowd on the lawn and sauntered over, opening the front door of the car. "Calm down," he advised, glaring at Mike. Behind him, with a cheerful wave, the Riddler sped away into the night.

"He was right there and you let him go!" Mike accused.

The cop looked over his shoulder, saw an empty alleyway, and turned back to Mike. "Buddy, there's nothing there."

"Well, sure, there's nothing there _now_," Mike snapped.

"You just hang tight. We'll deal with you in a few minutes."

"Aren't you going to go after him? He's in a white sedan -"

The cop slammed the door.

"Hey. HEY!" Mike yelped, drumming his foot against his door.

The cop cracked the front door open again. "You have the right to remain silent. I suggest you use it. Now calm down." He slammed the door and strode away.

How was he supposed to be calm when the Riddler was getting away and his gang was being cosseted by the cops? Fury pulsed through his body. He slammed his shoulder again and again against the door, screaming epithets at the world in general with an extra-large helping for the idiot cops that had locked _him_ up instead of the women.

His door suddenly opened, spilling him out onto the ground. He coughed, stunned, and looked up into a pair of tasers aimed directly at him.

"Calm down," one cop ordered.

"Screw you," Mike grumbled as he tried to find a way to stand up.

A sharp pain like a snakebite stabbed his stomach. Then, accompanied by a barrage of ominous clicking, electricity ripped through his body, throwing his head back and to the right while he stiffened helplessly on the ground.

After an eternity, roughly measured at five seconds, the taser stopped buzzing. Mike gasped openmouthed on the ground, shuddering.

The cops picked him up and dragged him across the lawn to an empty ambulance. "Present for ya," one cop grunted as the pair of them dumped him on a gurney.

"Gee, and I thought you forgot my birthday," the EMT joked, watching as the cops opened Mike's cuffs just long enough to snap them securely to the gurney. Without further ado, he reached over and yanked the two taser prongs out of Mike's stomach. "Arkham, huh?" he said, reading the stamp on Mike's scrubs as he pulled them aside to bandage his stomach.

"I work there," Mike muttered blearily.

"You sure you don't live there?" the EMT said, taping the bandage down.

"I live _here_," Mike snapped. "This is my house."

"Just asking. There you go," he added, tugging Mike's shirt back down. "We're gonna take a little ride to the hospital now. Don't go anywhere!" Chuckling to himself, he wandered out of Mike's line of sight. A cop seated himself on the little bench to his left, shutting the ambulance door behind him. With a bouncing jolt as they hopped off the curb, the ambulance took off toward the hospital.

Mike glared out of the tiny rear window, seething as they barreled through the quiet streets of suburban Gotham. This was all Nygma's fault. And as soon as the cops let him go, he'd make sure that Nygma got what was coming to him. Oh, yes. And he knew just how he was going to do it...

_Author's Note: Eddie makes friends everywhere he goes, doesn't he? The title of this chapter, Eddie's revenge, and Mike's fabulous mustache were inspired by Roald Dahl's 'The Twits'. Thanks for reading! _


End file.
